The Life of Bryan

Last weekend we picked up the newest addition to our family. Another Australian Shepherd that we have dubbed “Kita” after the drummer from the Finnish metal band Lordi… It felt only fitting since our other Aussi is named after Toki Wartooth from the fictional metal band Dethklok.

All I can say is that I completely forgot how little sleep I was going to be getting the first couple weeks and how often puppies need to go out and go potty, but she is extremely smart and already sits, waits, plays fetch and let’s us know when she needs to go out. I think she’s going to give Toki a run for her money.

More photos after the jump

For our last camping trip of the year Lauren and I decided to head back out to the Mojave National Preserve. Mid-October had a nice little heat wave so the weather out in high-desert was perfect, normally around that time of year it would be too cold to head out.

We’ve never been out there in the Fall and to our surprise it turns out October is hunting season. The last few times we’ve been out there there have never been other campers in the area, but this time we were greeted with the smell of campfires and all the prime spots were occupied by hunting parties. Luckily I knew of a spot that was less traveled and we had a great weekend.

Click here for more photos from the trip

Back in August Lauren and I took a road trip out to New Mexico to check out my parents property as a possible wedding location. I finally had a chance to check out the photos from the trip, here’s my favorite so far… More to come.

The first weekend of June, Lauren and I went up to SF to participate in a charity event called Tourism Cares. Tourism Cares is an event where a bunch of different companies involved in the tourism industry get together and volunteer their time to clean up a location in the US. Each year the event is held at a new location, this year just happened to be Angel Island in the San Francisco Bay. Lauren’s work put us up in the Marriott Union Square for three nights with free airfare there and back, in return we volunteered about 9 hours of pretty heavy manual labor on Angel Island. Angel Island is basically the Ellis Island of the West Coast, but due to lack of funding the island has fallen into a pretty dismal state of affairs. Our group ended up digging trenches, patching concrete and stacking about 40 cords of firewood. Overall the event was a pretty huge success and it was great to visit our old stomping grounds and see old friends.

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On May 14th I proposed to my longtime girlfriend Lauren on top of a large rock overlooking the Mojave Desert. Lauren had no idea what was coming and thought we were going on just another weekend camping trip. She was very surprised to say the least. Here are a few photos from the weekend.

Click here to view more photos from the weekend