Happy Halloween

Hope you all had a happy Halloween!





My brother Ryan was in town over the weekend so we went to Boo at the Zoo with his wife and daughter. It was fun. My favorite was the baby tigers.

Introducing Beego

Happy October everyone. I can't believe time is flying by so fast! Where has the month gone!

I'd like to introduce you to one of Vigo's relatives, Beego! He is an adorable bumblebee who like to pose for pictures but is not a huge fan of sitting on rocks. Stacie and I had a great time playing with Beego one afternoon this week, but we were glad to get inside due to the wind that has been blowing all this week!

GHC 2010

On the last week in Septemeber I went to Atlanta for the 2010 Grace Hopper Conference. This year I served as the Industry Advisory Board representative for HP. I also came up with the idea for a panel on the Latest and Greatest in Assistive Technology. My panel idea was accepted so I soon found some amazing women to be on the panel. We had panelists from Microsoft, IBM, and more. Here are some pictures from the event

Color by Night

Rob and I went up to Estes this weekend. We decided to make it a photography trip, and took some night shots at Bear Lake. When we got there, it seemed pretty dark becasue the moon had not yet risen, but as the moon rose, the sky got lighter and lighter. I learned a lot about exposure, aperture, ISO, and shutter speed. It was a nice night, although it was getting a little chilly when we left. Then we slept for a few hours and went back to Bear Lake for some sunrise pictures.

The shot below was one of my favorites from our night adventure. This is the raw image from the camera -- no Photoshop done except for adding my name :) Our eyes couldn't pick up any of the color, but by leaving the shutter open, our camera absorbed the light and captured the color as if it was daylight. You can also see that we caught the North Star in the picture, and hence the stars are rotating around one of the stars.

This photo was taken at 9pm by leaving the shutter open for 10 minutes.

Google Voice and Eve Update

Rob and I are planning an upcoming trip to New Zealand. It is one of those trips I've always wanted to do, and we figure that now might be a good time to do it! So we are busy planning. Luckily, we can do most things through the internet, but some things we cannot do and we must do by phone.

So today I called New Zealand using Google Voice. It is this neat application you can use with either a phone or a computer, and it only cost 2c a minute to call NZ! Very cool! It worked really smoothly! And, calls to the United States are free, so if we bring Rob's phone with us to New Zealand, we can call home for free as long as we can get wireless!

I miss having a dog this week, but I am looking forward to the phase report that comes out tomorrow! Last week Eve was in phase 6! I'm kind of surprised she made it this far, but now that she did, I think she can make it all the way! Good luck Eve! I'm hoping I can go see her graduate!

Here's a cute old picture of Eve, who's all grown up now ;)

Back to Puppies

Last weekend Rob and I puppysat Vernon, who is Vigo's brother. We had an overlap of one night so we could let them play and get to know each other :)

They were very happy to play with each other -- don't they look happy in this picture? I felt like I was the mom to twin boys... always had to keep an eye on them so they didn't get into trouble!

Vernon is darker in color and is on the left, Vigo is bigger and on the right.

They trotted around in the backyard for probably 20 minute, just holding the same toy and being happy to be together!

Then they switched to trotting with a rope -- they never did play tug with it though.

Two tired puppies relax when I tell them "That's Enough!".
They patiently wait until I say OK.

"Can we play yet please? Look how good we are! Plus, we're super cute!"

Fall is here?!

Beautiful colors in Colorado means fall is officially here. I still like to deny it, since my garden is still growing, but I do love the fall colors!

My friend Stacie and I took a drive up to Estes today to take some photos of the aspen and play around with our cameras. Boy do we have a lot to learn! But we had a lot of fun learning together and I think I got a few good shots (maybe a total of 3 of the 278 pictures that I took)

Some mountain peering out behind the aspen trees -- Stacie found this spot and then I 'borrowed' it once she was done :)

"Depth of Field" or "Depth of Color" shot... I'm still learning how to do this more consistently.

Now I have to go get ready for work... another work week coming up. Man, I sure do love weekends!

Guide Dogs and Firemen

A few weeks ago we had a Guide Dog outing to the firestation. Rob and I both went.

Last year Eve was afraid of the firemen, but this year none of the dogs were afraid at all. In fact, Vigo was more interested in the other puppy (Mulan), than he was with the fireman. Silly puppy!

Greyrock Hike

Wow, is this Brianna's blog? For once, she has no dogs in her posts :)

Rob and I had the weekend Vigo free, so we decided to do a hike we've been wanting to do all summer. It was a hike in the Poudre Canyon called Greyrock. It was a beautiful day for a hike. This is Rob with Greyrock in the background. We actually hiked all the way to the summit -- if you go around back it is a gentler slope so you don't have to rock climb.

Overall, Rob and I would give this hike 2 thumbs down. Yes, it was pretty, but the trail was poorly marked. We got lost 3x.... one time we were definitely on 'a' trail, but then the trail just stopped. We spent at least an hour hiking around that area trying to find the trail. We even ran into another group who were doing the same thing. Finally we decided to backtrack, and after about 15 minutes we found where the trail had split and we had gone straight but the TRUE trail was a switchback. Ugh. How frustrating. Then on the way back down, we got lost again but we could see the trail in front of us, so we just kept going even though we were obviously not on the main trail.

Overall, I think we hiked over 8 miles (including our detour). We thought we'd be gone for a few hours, but instead we were gone for 8 including driving. And now we are tired and sore. But it was pretty and we made it!

Rob and I at the summit.

The view was nice at the top.... we could see smoke from a forest fire that just started this morning near Loveland. I hope they can get it under control soon!

VigoPhotoBook

Click here to view this photo book larger

More dogs, seriously?

Hmmm...one might think that all I do is dogs... but the truth is that this weekend the majority of my time I did work with pictures of Vigo -- I finished a mini-scrapbook of him, and had fun looking and organizing all the pictures. This was one of my favorites...



Rob and I don't have Vigo this week -- we are missing him and can't wait to have the furry little friend back!

Another Vigo Photo Shoot Picture

We are so lucky to have such a calm puppy. Here is another photo from Vigo's photo shoot which I like... he even let me fold his paws to make him look like this. Awww, I love this little guy!

Vigo the Model

I like taking pictures. And I love puppies :) So what better way to spend the rest of my weekend than taking pictures of puppies, especially mine!

I spent Sunday afternoon taking some snapshots of Vigo. I went to the fabric store and bought some fabric for backgrounds, and set up a little photo studio in our front room. Vigo was such a trooper! He was awesome and stayed still for most of the photos! This one is my favorite:

It is interesting how different angles make the colors look different. The photo below looks more like a "Glamour Shots" photo of Vigo. I might have to do some editing to see if I can bring out the blue in the background some day... there is so much to do!

Alberta Falls

We did another hike on Sunday. It was to beautiful Alberta Falls. Another beautiful day for a hike with family!

Beavers!

Estes Park has some neat beavers, and this time we got there early enough so there was light to take some pictures. They were very busy harvesting aspen leaves -- cutting down little trees. (and some big ones too)

Mmmm... aspen leaves. As soon as they got a branch, they would run with it on the grass and swim into the middle of the river.

Estes Park

As the summer quickly draws to a close, Rob and I spent the weekend in Estes. We got up there Friday night to get ready for a big hike on Saturday morning. Then on Saturday morning my mom, dad, Rob, and I went up Trail Ridge Road to the Ute Trail. It was surprisingly cold on top...

For a few miles, it was flat -- we even gained about 400 feet in elevation.

But after that, it dropped straight down! It was down down down, not like the normal National Park trails with switchbacks, but it was an old Ute trail, so it just went straight down. I couldn't take my eyes off the trial unless I actually stopped.

Even though it was steep, it sure was pretty!

Blue Colorado Sky!

Vigo's First Outing

Looking back, last weekend was actually pretty busy :)

We took Vigo on his first real outing, since he had his shots last week. We took him on a hike up to Devil's Backbone, an interesting rock structure. We wanted to do a longer hike, but we thought that since Vigo was so little, we might as well keep it short. This was a good short hike, and although the day started out cloudy, the clouds soon split and the sun came out. It even got a little hot!

Vigo did great! As you can see here, he is smiling so much he almost looks like he is yawning ;)

We brought lots of water for Vigo, but his tongue was out the entire time regardless of if he just had a drink.

What a beautiful Colorado day! And it is so nice Vigo isn't too big to hold yet!

Defending the Caveman

Rob and I had another fun double date last weekend when we went with some friends, Bogdan and Irena to the dinner theater play, Defending the Caveman. It was a lot of fun, and it was great to get to dress up and go out! The play was not the traditional dinner theater event... it was a one man comedy show about the differences of the sexes. Pretty funny. I had wanted to see it in Vegas anyways, and so I was glad I got to see it here (and for less $$ I'm sure!)

Geocaching?

I know I haven't blogged in a long time -- where does the time go? So now I have to cover some lost time! Here it goes!

Last weekend we had some friends over for dinner... they told us all about their adventures geocaching (as well as all about their cool phone apps you can use to geocache). In looking at the phone app, we learned there was a geocache treasure about 500 yds from our house! And so off we went on our very first Geocaching adventure!

It was a lot harder than I thought. Perhaps that is because I was the only poor soul without a smart phone. Sarah, Dave, and Rob all used their nifty phones to direct them straight to this tree... I was left just using my imagination! (and of course taking pictures)

Rob and I had pretty much given up and assumed someone had since stolen the valuable treasure, but our friends Sarah and Dave didn't give up so easily. it was dark, but Sarah kept searching and finally found the treasure!

What a valuable treasure it was! It was filled with plastic rings. We signed the guestbook (small enough to fit in an advil container), and took nothing nor did we leave anything.

It was a fun adventure! perhaps one of many more...