Our Search for a Puppy!

We are getting a dog! We have been waiting so long for this!

We had wanted to adopt and looked into a Labardor Rescue here in San Diego. Our application was denied because we dont have a fenced in yard! There are so many dogs that live in our neighborhood and no one has a fenced in yard! We have a dog park two blocks away but the volunteer told us that dog parks were unsafe. What? The dog will live a great life and still get tons of excersise....jim and I will run with it, enter it in 5ks with us, go hiking, camping, etc! We just don't get it!

We are now looking into different breeders to find our perfect puppy! We have both wanted one for so long, and so after the minor adoption set back, we are so excited for it to be a reality.

We have been looking into a breeder called Cedar Ranch Labs. http://www.cedarranchlabradors.com/cedar_ranch_website_025.htm These are photos of the little pups that we get to pick one from. They will be ready when we get back from Belize!

Their mom is named Karlie:

And their dad is Trace:

The New Dahlem Diggs!

We are finally getting close to finishing the set up of our new condo downtown!

Here is the view out our floor to ceiling windows, we can't see the harbor and ships since we are only on the 3rd floor and there are big buildings blocking our view, but it is neat being in such an urban area with mostly mixed-use high rises (Condos/office/shops, etc) Here are some pictures of the living room as you look in from the front doorHere is looking back towards the door from the end of the living room Here is our new desk / work area:
Here is our kitchen
Here is our bedroomHere is looking towards the bathroom, with our dual closests on each side of the little hallway
Here is our little cat Millie, she loves the hardwood floors, and she loves to slide all over them when she runs! It's really cute!

We are excited to host Thanksgiving this year at our new place. Lindsay and Aaron are driving in from Albuquerque, NM, Erin and her boyfriend are driving down from San Francisco, and LJ will be joining us too!

The morning of Thanksgiving we are running in a 5k turkey trot in Balboa Park. We start and finish right in the middle of The Prado by all the museums, it should be a really pretty run. Lindsay is pregnant so she will be walking the 5k, she get lots of credit for taking part since she's carry a little one with her! :)

The rest of the weekend after Thanksgiving, we will be showing our guests around town, possible doing the fun tourists things we wouldn't do unless we had guests, like taking the double decker red tour bus around town!

Canoe Trip!

This weekend we had a great time going to the Colorado River and renting canoes for a day-long trip though Topock Gorge!

There was 12 of us that went on the trip and we had 6 canoes rented for us. We left Friday evening and hit major traffic, after 3 hours we had only gone 80-90 miles...Eventually we got to the campsite around 10pm. We were camping Friday night at Park Moabi near Needles, CA at the start of the canoe trip. We had a campsite right on the Colorado River. Even though we all got there after dark, Ryan and Savitri were even later, they were on "Savitri Time" and got to the campsite at about 12:15am! We will have more pictures on the blog once people send us theirs, this is all we had on our camera, here we are at the campsite in the morning before we started our canoeing:

It was very cool at night, but the weather on Saturday was absolutely perfect, it was completely sunny, light winds, and about 80-85 degrees. We had a 17 mile trip that day so the canoe outfitter had to start us at 7am, right after the sun came up. At the start of the trip the river goes through the desert, then about 5 miles later we paddled through red-ish brown cliffs in Topock Gorge. The water in the river was cool, but we still swam in the river and we even jumped off some rocks about 15 feet over the river.

We were supposed to meet our rafting outfitter at the take-out point at 3:30pm. Colleen and Jim were the only canoe to arrive on time as the group started getting split up near the end. (We had to turn off the main river channel into a side channel, and then turn off into a small bay where the take-out point was.) When the other 10 people didn't show up, Jim paddled back out into the side channel and river looking for the group while Colleen waited at the take out point. After 1.5 hours of looking for everybody else--just as the sun was dropping behind the horizon--Jim found the others they off on a wrong dead-end side canyon and guided them to the correct take-out point just as it was getting dark! If it had been just 10 or 15 minutes later it would have been completely dark out and cold (the temperature drops quickly in the desert after dark, it very quickly drops down into the 40s at night!) and the other 10 people would have had a miserable night cold and without food!

We got back to the campsite and made dinner by our fire by the river. We had turkey dogs, sweet potatoes, portabello mushrooms, dorritos, chocolate brownies, it was quite a feast! We then played a 2-3 hour game of Catch Phrase. In fact after we went to bed we could hear others in our group still playing it by the fire! In the middle of the night, at about 3 or 4 am, a windstorm starting blowing through the desert and shook the tent so much that we couldn't sleep anymore. It felt like an earthquake because it was shaking our tent so much! As soon as it was light out, we all got up, quickly packed up and headed out. We had plans to make a huge breakfast at the campsite but the wind was way to strong and blowing sand everywhere. We headed to a good down-home breakfast at The Wagon Wheel restaurant in Needles before our drive back to San Diego!

We are back now, showered, in our PJ's and exhausted and it is not even 7pm yet! It will be an early night for us!

The Move, Christine's Visit, Colleen's Birthday!

So the move is officially over! We pretty much have everything set up and ready to go and be livable again. Our building is really nice with our pool and hot tub and the great views. We are loving our new neighborhood. Being right by the harbor and seeing the tall ships every day makes Colleen happy! Everyone that lives around us are young professionals and young married couples, it is a great scene. We have lots of cafes, bistros, bars and restaurants all around us and we walk everywhere....we love that! Millie, our cat, loves the big main room with the hardwood floors and sprints and slides all over the place to get out her energy! Sometimes when she starts running, her feet slip on the hardwood and she just runs in place for a few seconds until she gets traction, it looks like the cartoons! She also stares out of the big floor to ceiling windows all day.

Still, we were sad to leave our old neighborhood and didn't like having to move. Millie loved the whole moving process though, check out her playing on the boxes while we were waiting for the moving company to arrive!














Even though Colleen is smiling here, it wasn't nearly as much fun for us to move as it was for Millie:














So far this is the only picture we have of the inside of the new apartment right after we moved in before we got it mostly set up, we just found our camera again so we'll get more pictures up next week! (See the next blog down for more info on our new building and location)














It was great to have Christine visit once again and to play host. We really enjoyed her company! We ran a 5k race in Balboa Park on Saturday night, it was a night time 5k that started at 7pm.














Right after the race we went home, changed, and went to an early Halloween party. Colleen was a St Paulie Girl, Christine was a Bass Ale Girl, and Jim rounded out the beer theme as he was a beer keg. (His costume was a 'working' costume, it really dispensed beer!)

































Colleen's birthday was on November 1st and she was taking yet another CSET (CA teaching exam) this time in Earth Science. When she is done with all her tests she will be licensed to teach Elementary School and High School for General Science, Biology and Earth Science. Phew! After her exam, we all went out to Wine Steals in our old hillcrest neighborhood for their Saturday evening wine tasting with a small group of friends.

We have lost our camera sometime after moving so unfortunately no pictures to enhance this post. Send us positive energy that we will find it! (Well someone must have because tonight we found our camera!!!!!)

We will be camping and canoeing this weekend so we will blog when we get back!