-LorenV.com-

Here is some photo journaling of our time at South Bend. This issue’s hilights include the famous Notre Dame locker room and St. Mary’s College.

http://www.lorenv.com/pics/sbsw/

This is an update for friends and family using this little website to keep tabs on us. Carrie and I will be moving away from Colorado this summer (my first time living anywhere but here) and heading to South Bend, Indiana where I will be attending the University of Notre Dame. We will be there for about one year then come back to Colorado.

Here are some pictures of the school.

http://www.nd.edu/campus-and-community/sights-sounds/virtual-tour/

This Fall Carrie and I found the word ‘dog’ coming up in our conversations more and more often. I had never really imagined we would get a dog at this time of life but I had to admit the idea sounded good. After more talk we found ourselves at the Larimer County Humane Society, and then again a few hours later for a second visit with Stella.

Stella was a good dog 90% of the time - and very cute. Even at 3 months old she was was very ’solid’ and growing stronger, which is where her problems became accentuated. Stella had a dominant tempermant around other animals and around us - and she enforced that with her mouth. After working Stella with Laurie Buffington over at Dog Days Training Center (Laurie is one of the top people in her field and comes highly recommended) we felt that even with the progress being made that Stella would never be trustworthy dog in dynamic situations. I drove Stella back to the Humane Society with Lose You by Pete Yorn playing on the radio.

Stella was adopted again very quickly by another family and we learned alot about the importance having of a dog that fits you. It isn’t fair to you or the dog to try and force a fit. The hard part is finding a fit. Picking a dog simply by playing with it for 20 minutes is not easy. Fortunately Laurie trained us things to look for in a dog, and we applied that to the next dog we visited.

Our next visit was in our own home from dalmatianrescue.org. This allowed our home to be screened while we screened the dog, a 7-10 month old Dalmatian-Whippet mix. You may mix those two names however you wish from Dalpet to Whipmation. Long story short, out home is now shared with an athletic spotted critter named Avie (as in Avalanche). After a few weeks she is fitting in better all the time and has shown us what the right match can mean.

 She also can jump like a basketball player, gazelle, and cheetah rolled into one dog sized package and has muscles bulges I can never dream of having.

Sleeping IN the Christmas Tree.

Sleeping during Christmas decorating.

Wondering where updates have gone too? Well look no further than my ‘other’ website.

 www.adventuracompany.com is up and running strong. The forums are starting to gain momentum with posts from people and articles are coming to the front page.

I am packing to head down to a wedding in Victoria, TX right now (congrats to Matt and Catherine) and felt the need to upload the wedding pictures from my wedding!

Without further ado, here are our wedding pictures organized into a nice gallery. Much thanks to Ben Johnson.

and the bonus… our new fish tank. Thanks to the Dollard’s for supplying a new home to our fish after their other home self destructed all over our living room.

 Yesterday, May 23, 2007, we attempted to climb the fourteener Mt. Bierstadt near Georgetown, CO. Apparantly springtime means snow - and lots of it - in Georgetown. Click the picture to see why.

We gave up on the camping overnight part and celebrate my Dad’s birthday at Cinzettis and ate too much food. Quite the opposite of a hike.

 As I promised, here are some amazing and breathtaking photos of our second fish tank, which we actually setup first. At this point you may be thinking that we are using fish as substitute children. I assure you though, we are not. We only named our fish, feed them better than ourselves, watch them, talk to them, read them bedtime stories, and hire fish sitters whenever we need to have some mommy and daddy time away from the children fish. In fact I laugh at the people who treat their pets like children.

 PS I am working on a gallery for our wedding photos right now. There are lots of pictures to sort through! Stay tuned.

Carrie and I have our aquarium up and running. It has already given us more entertainment than 2 grown adults should get out of such a thing. I thought we should share our fish with the world.

I started by taking pictures of the main tank (yes we have 2 tanks

  As you can see our fish like to swim around alot. This makes them look like streaking blurs when you take photos with nonprofessional equipment like we have. Still, it makes the fishies look fast. Like jets. In the water.

“Tank” 2 is coming tomorrow.

 I sent this letter out in the mail today.

Dear Yoplait,

   Enclosed with this letter is a foil topper for a Mixed Berries flavored Yoplait yogurt. I never thought that a little yogurt could have so much influence on my life like the yogurt this foil topper covered did. My wife and I eat yogurt almost daily and I would conservatively say that Yoplait accounts for a good 70% of our yogurt consumption.

 We got some of our wedding pictures in the other day! Funny thing is this however… Ben sent us 3 CD’s worth of pictures but two of the CD’s got broken. But, I am putting a preview picture up anyways!

 (Click for a big version!)

THERE ARE MORE LIKE THIS SOON!