Circle of Life

I have been meaning to do a blog post on the puppies and I will get around to actually doing that. Let's just say that they are crazy and fun and keeping me busy and sleepless! I will post a picture at the bottom of the post so that everyone can see them.

Today was a rough day for us all. We lost Dutch- the Hesser's family dog and the original Australian Shepherd. If it wasn't for Dutch's sweet nature and great temperament, we would never have even looked at getting an Aussie puppy. He was a wonderful dog and was loved by everyone he met. Even though we have known that this day was coming for awhile, it's still very hard. Between our families, this is the 4th dog we have lost this year. It makes me wonder sometimes why we even want to have another dog when it hurts so much to lose them. But, we both have to remember that we wouldn't trade our memories and experiences with them for anything. We were very lucky to have Dutch in our lives and we will always be thankful for the time we had with him. I can only hope that the puppies we are taking care of now, will bring as much fun and happiness to their future families as our past dogs have done for us. RIP Dutch, Xena, Pearl, and Ginny. We love and miss you.



and the youngest dogs in our lives:

PUPPIES!!!!

Ty and I have been talking awhile about getting a dog. We really love Australian Shepherds but we wanted to find a dog that was from a shelter. Well, when I looked yesterday and found Aussie puppies at a nearby shelter, we just had to call! It turns out the puppies are only 5 weeks old and without a mother. They are too young to be officially adopted, but the shelter was looking for a foster home for them. They need lots of love and need to stay together until they are at least 8 weeks old. If they didn't find a foster home today or tomorrow, they were going to be sent up to some shelters up in Colorado. Well, we couldn't let that happen, and since no one else volunteered to take them in, tomorrow we will begin fostering 6 puppies! They are completely adorable and it will be hard to part with them at the end (although, if all pans out, we will be keeping one). Since I have the free time, it just made sense for us to do it. This will definitely be a big adventure for us, but we can't wait. Here is a picture of two of the puppies from the shelter's website. Hopefully tomorrow I will have some pictures of all of them together :) Anyone want a puppy?

More soccer and Furniture shopping

Soccer may become the theme of this fall. By the end of it, I should really know a lot more about the game!

On Sunday morning, We went and cheered on Ty as he played in his first game with a local soccer team. He played well, although he struggled a bit with the lack of air. Rio Rancho sits at 5,290 ft. MUCH different from Florida. I enjoyed watching and taking pictures. By the end of our time here, I should be a lot better with my camera. There is just so much going on to take pictures of! And having the blog is good incentive as well :) Here are some of my favorite pictures of Ty's game:

Feeling the pain now...

The rest of the weekend (Saturday and Sunday afternoons) was spent furniture shopping. We managed to visit most of the furniture stores in the greater Albuquerque area. We had fun though and found some good stuff. Should you need anyone to refurnish your house, we are now experts :) Here's a picture of Ty with his favorite bedroom set...

Soccer games and Balloons!!

Friday night I finally made it out to watch the Coach Hessers coach a Rio Rancho High School JV game. It was a really nice complex located on the reservation right down the road. The boys won 7-0 against their new rivals, Cleveland HS (a new school that took its students from Rio Rancho). It was fun to watch them play, and we stayed and watched the Varsity boys also dominate their game. The only thing that would have made the night better was if it was slightly warmer- it was soooo cold! :) Going to have to adjust to this desert weather quickly!

The coaches:












The complex with the mountain as a backdrop:


Saturday morning was the start of the 2009 Albuquerque Balloon Festival. The Festival will last until next weekend and the number of hot air balloons that turned out is amazing. Apparently there actually less than normal due to the economy but it's still awesome. There are often one or two hot air balloons in the sky when you wake up in the morning around here, and now I understand why the locals don't get excited- its nothing like during the Balloon Festival.
We woke up early and watched them take off. They have to take off in rows so it takes awhile for all of them to get up in the air. The wind wasn't perfect and they weren't able to stay up very long in the air before they had to descend back down, but luckily for us due to the wind shift, many of them were landing in the neighborhood around us. Each balloon has its own chase car and they drive around, following the balloon, and quickly packing them up once they land. We had a lot of fun "chasing" the chase cars. Apparently some ballooners will even ask for help from nearby spectators. We weren't able to get close enough for that but the week is still young :) Ty got a bit addicted to chasing the balloons, if he decides he doesn't want to do Coastal Engineering, he could always be a professional balloon chaser... Here are some of our favorite pictures from this morning:


Dutch walked with us around the block while we watched the initial ascent of the balloons.

All the balloons in the air! So pretty and colorful!

Starting to land in the neighborhood! There are two on the ground to the right. Ty and his mom are on the left of the picture. And you can see the chase cars going too!

Up close and personal. Landing right by us :)

First Blog Post/ New Mexico!!

So we have decided to jump on the blog bandwagon and start one of our own! Now that we are so far away from a lot of our friends and family, we thought this would be a great way to keep everyone updated with all of our crazy adventures. We hope to keep it fairly updated (a couple times a week) and upload pictures so you can see all the amazing things we get to see. We miss everyone and hope to see you all soon! First adventure... New Mexico!





This is Ty's car packed down during the dust storm in TX.
He had a soft top carrier on top of the car plus our two road bikes on the back. His car was sitting pretty low with all that extra weight.











We left Vicksburg, Mississippi around 10 AM on Tuesday. Unfortunately we hit traffic immediately! It took us half an hour to make it across the Mississippi River into Louisiana. We got onto the interstate at exit 1B. 30 minutes for a little over a mile was not a good start to our trip. Luckily, we made it through Louisiana pretty quickly. There wasn't much to see there. In fact, there wasn't much to see until we made it to Dallas. We awesomely timed our trip so that we hit Dallas right at 5:30 PM. Ty assures me that Dallas rush hour traffic is not as bad as Atlanta's but I still didn't find it very fun. We made it all the way to Wichita Falls, TX before calling it a day.

The next morning we woke up early and got on the road around 6:30 AM. We were ready to get there! The trip was incredibly boring. Texas is HUGE and the way our route went, there was not much to see besides cows and windmills. The winds were high, and we drove through a pretty dense dust storm at one point. Once we got within 15 miles of the New Mexico border, the scene changed and the wind picked up a lot. The closer we got to Albuquerque, the higher the winds got. It was pretty scary for a while there, both of us getting pushed around due to the winds. We couldn't even go the speed limit (75 MPH), we had to stick around 60. The saying is true, though, slow and steady was the way for us to make it up into Albuquerque. We made it up to the house in Rio Rancho around 2:30- just in time for Ty to go help coach the Rio Rancho High School JV soccer game. Perfect timing.

We're very happy to be here!