First day in Kansas

After travel and all, Wednesday was our first day in Kansas. We had an appointment to met at Dr. Julian's office at 8:30 am. We had to drive an hour and half from Manhattan, KS and we had just one minor bump in the road...Matthew might not appreciate that I share this, but one of Kansas' finest thought he'd pull us over and communicate to us that we were moving a little too fast through that part of Kansas, "Sir, this is a citation...." Lets just say it was a construction zone and we'll leave it at that. Matthew said it was hard to not put the petal to the metal when you're driving on straight highway with no one in your way. He's says he was just enjoying the open road, which he can't do in Philly. I laughed at the irony of it all and made him promise that it wouldn't ruin our day. I told him I'd take the blame because, yes, once again his wife was not ready on time.

Well, about 8:30 we're driving through McPherson, KS and yes, it is small. We pull up to the office and it's beautiful from the outside, pictures don't do it justice. We go inside and we are very impressed. We waited about 10 minutes until Dr. Julian was ready. While we were waiting I started scoping out some of the toys in the little kiddie corner because I thought that I should find some like that for Aleah, I mean they were pretty cool. But Matthew very nicely expressed that he didn't want me playing with the toys when the dentist walked out, so I had to come sit down by him and fold my hands in my lap and be very quiet. Okay, I can't blame him, but they were cool toys.
Anyway, we got to met Dr. Julian and his partner Brian, I don't remember how to say his last name, then they showed us their office. And let me tell you, it was awesome!!! They gutted it 5 years ago and put all new equipment in and added on to the office. They have 5 operatories and 3 hygienists. They have computers in every operatory, they use lasers and scanners. We observed Dr. Julian doing a crown. It took 10-15 minutes to give the anesthetic, prep the tooth, take the pictures, and put a temporary crown on. Instead of doing an impression, like Matthew would do at school to make the crown, the dentist just used this scanner/camera, put it in the patients mouth and took pictures of the tooth at every possible angle and a couple minutes later a 3D picture of the crown prep and surrounding teeth pop up on the computer screen. They send that to the lab and get the crown in 2 weeks. There could be some minor adjusting to the crown to make it fit just right. It was very impressive. Everything about this office was impressive, the dentists, his staff, his office, the interaction with the patients, the interaction with his staff. The atmosphere was perfect. Okay, really I didn't mean to get into it so much, but we really loved it!

The town was equally impressive, but some might not agree. I drove around with Dr. Julian's wife. She showed whatever I wanted to see and took me to met the other two dentists wives. It was pretty fun. Okay so there's no mall, but everything else they offer outweighs that fact. McPherson is a town of about 15,000. Yes, small, but if you've got everything you need, then what more can you ask for. I just have a few desires of a town: the hospital be in the town, it has programs where our children will be afforded every opportunity, and city-league sports. Everything else is a plus! They have 3 colleges in the town, one of which is endorsed by Jay Leno because it's one of the few schools that you can get a degree in auto restoration, that's cool right?! They have a nice YMCA, they have a water park that only costs a dollar for kids, they are a very family/religious oriented community--every Wednesday night is church night for everyone in the community, they don't even schedule high school events on that night. Oh, they do have a super Walmart, I can't even say that about where I live now. They have a few fast food places and this authentic Mexican restaurant where the food is delicious, that too isn't something I can say about where I live now. They have many dance/athletic programs through the Y and many private programs for music/dance. They also have this really nice softball complex, which is nicer than any fields we have played at here. The high school is the exact size that Matthew and I had talked about wanted our kids to go to........... so this opportunity, to us, sounds like once in a lifetime type of thing.
Matthew stayed at the office to observe and hang out with the 2 dentists there. They have another office about 2o minutes from there that the 3rd dentist was working at. They're also looking to open another about 3o min. from there.
We met up with the dentists and Matthew for lunch and then after driving around a little bit more, Karen, Dr. Julian's wife dropped me back off at the office so that she could take her granddaughter home to give her a nap. While I myself decided to take a nap in the car. I could have stayed in the office, but I was so tired from the travel and going to bed late the night before. I woke up to Matthew knocking on the window and saw that everyone was done and had gone home and it was only 4pm. Then I drove Matthew around the town, okay I couldn't remember where anything was except the water park, so I showed him that and ten we went to Dr. Julain's house, sat and talked a little and then went to dinner and met the other 2 dentists and their families. It was an exciting day. As we were saying bye in the parking lot, Emily, one of the dentists wife, says I just want to welcome you to Kansas, as she pointed to the dark bubbling clouds above us. And she continued to say, "When you see clouds like that, you know someone somewhere in Kansas is getting a tornado tonight." Huh, little did we know at the time, it would be us. Funny huh, not the kind of funny where you laugh out loud, more like interesting funny. Well, we said bye and Dr. Julian said that they would be in touch. And Matthew was supposed to go out to the other office the next day to check that one out and see Brian set some implants, but as I previously mentioned, there was a tornado and that changed plans a little bit.
Oh, I didn't tell you that in the office they don't refer anything out. He is a general dentist but he has done a lot of continuing education courses and he does everything is his office. And he has become the implant Guru, he goes all around the states doing seminars on implants. In his office he does sedation and implants, which were Matthew's 2 biggest reasons for wanting to do a GPR, he does ortho, he does sinus lifts, he does bone grafts, he pulls wisdom teeth, and he does everything else that you would have done at a regular office. They aren't interested necessarily in quantity so some of there best days, as in $$$$, are when they see few patients because of the procedures they do.
They are looking for someone to learn all the procedures the first year and then sign that person on as an associate and then in 3-5 years become a partner.
So, I never thought that I'd say this, but I really want to move to Kansas and for Matthew to get this job. This, like I said, sounds like a once in a life time opportunity to learn and be successful and to absolutely love where we live. Now, we just wait to hear back from Dr. Julian.
This post ended up being so long, sorry, but what can I say, this is our family journal. I'll have to do another post later about the ToRnAdO!!

This is before we left Manhattan that morning to go to McPherson.

This is the office from the outside.

This is the front desk.

One of the three hygienists stations.

One of the five operatories.

Dr. Jon Julian

His partner, Dr. Brian Kynaston

(and there's also Dr. Austin Babcock, but I couldn't find a picture of him.)