Millards In The Mountains

I have been thinking a lot about volunteering somewhere lately. I miss doing volunteer work and I want to give back. In college, my roommate Anne and I decided to volunteer at the Lawrence Humane Society. We only went once or twice. We basically just took the dogs out on leashes and walked them around so that they could get out of their kennels and get some fresh air. I didn't understand a lot about dogs then and I was kind of scared when they protested so hard against getting back in their cages. It was hard to see animals in that condition, and even harder to see the "countdown" on the time they would be at the shelter. I just wanted to take them all home, but most of them had serious health or behavior issues that I would not have been able to begin to address. (Not to mention the fact that we lived in the dorms!) Still, the cruelty that some humans seem capable of inflicting on innocent animals was too hard to deal with. Fast forward to today. After work, I went to th...

I just realized over the past couple of days that probably the main reason I haven't been blogging as much lately is because of writing overload from class. While my second Penn State course has been much easier to handle overall, it really is a lot of writing with the weekly papers we are asked to compile. It seems I dump all of my (somewhat limited) creativity and energy into those darn papers and by the time I am finished, it's hard to write a blog post! Luckily, I have some pictures from my new camera to post, which rescues me from having to do TOO much writing tonight. (I finished and turned in my homework last night, so I'm off the hook with school for a couple days.) First off, I have to say that I LOVE my new camera. It's super small so I can take it anywhere. It's super thin, so I can put it in my pocket. Oh, and did I mention that it's PINK?!? :) There will be no excuses for not having lots of pictures now, unless I forget to bring it along with me. So...

SOOO, you've probably been wondering what's been going on in our world lately, huh? Don't worry, this blog freeze hasn't been intentional this time. Everything is fine here! Ever since the new year, we've been in crisis mode at work. We have a huge project due at the beginning of April and we've got a long way to go to get it done! I'm doing all I can to help. Getting up at 4 am to get my hours in before the night shift, training new hires and working A LOT. Last week I logged 55.5 hours (as per the title) and I probably would have done more if I had my computer longer! Funny thing is, time seems to FLY at work because we are so busy. I've been frustrated for a while, but it's nothing I can really go in to here. Work is demanding. School is demanding. Running/jogging is lacking. Sometimes, it all seems so overwhelming until I get a little break somewhere. Last week, it was Matt cooking dinner and taking the dogs to the park so I didn't have to wo...

Matt basically had a 5 day weekend starting last Thursday, which meant our puppies were free from their kennels for 5 whole days! Five days of freedom sure makes for some angry dogs when they have to return to slumber during the day. And you can be sure that let me know about it! Among other things, Perdi is learning to howl! Most of the time, it's just little barks and yips. But when she howls, it's pretty darn cute. Hope you enjoy this video of the dogs "voicing" their thoughts about being alone all day when I got home. :)

I'm slowly but surely catching up on blogs. I know I skipped a pretty major post; Christmas! Can you believe we didn't take a single picture? I seem to get my blogging inspiration from pictures, so I'm still trying to decide what to do about that one. Anyhow, to celebrate the turn of the decade, Matt and I decided to head up to the mountains for some skiing, relaxing, and some COLD weather! The worst part of skiing in my opinion, is riding the lift. It's so cold in the wind. I spent a lot of time in the lodge. The snow conditions weren't great. It was pretty icy in some spots. I don't like ice...I can't control myself very well when it's like that and I just get really tired! Also, there were TONS of kids on my favorite run. They were stopped all over the slopes and it's hard for me to get going fast when I'm scared of running over one of them! Cheers to a new year! We look kind of dorky in our goggles, but it's so pretty on top of the mounta...

2010 has started off a bit rough as far as the functionality of our house is concerned. A few weeks ago, the kitchen sink disposal quit working. Thinking that we had accidentally broken the on/off switch somehow, Matt decided to replace it this weekend. What an ordeal that was! After a couple trips to home depot to get the right switch, and finally locating our breaker box (which is on the outside of our house?!?), we were ready to get to work. We discovered that our breaker box is not properly labeled when Matt got his first taste of electric shock while unscrewing the old switch. So we turned off almost every circuit in the house just to be safe! Unfortunately, after all was said and done, the disposal still doesn't work. In the same day, we found out that our hot water heater went out! The first two showers of my new year were icy cold. Let me tell you, there are not many things on this earth that I despise more than cold showers. After some investigating in the basement, we fou...

It is time for me to begin playing catch-up on all the time that has passed since my last blog. The past month or so has been pretty bleak and hard. I guess I should further specify that time frame as right after Thanksgiving to right before our trip back to Kansas for Christmas. Life has thrown me a couple curveballs that I never knew would be so hard to deal with. I didn't really feel like "myself," and certainly didn't want to pass along any negativeness to you all. I didn't want to blog about happy things during a time where I found so little to be happy about. Even though there were many bright spots that are most certainly deserving of a good blog. I feel a lot better now. Maybe it's because my class is over and it got really crazy at the end, or because the stress of the holidays and travelling is behind us. Or maybe it's because things are a lot different now with my family and I am beginning to accept that; well most of it anyway. I am able to l...