I was born & raised in the small town of Robert, Louisiana. He grew up in the big city - New Orleans. Our unlikely meeting led to an even more unlikely courtship & an unexpected proposal. We love to travel, and have a special place in our hearts for National Parks. We've been to Grand Canyon National Park, Smoky Mountain National Park, and of course Rocky Mountain National Park, where we are members. We look forward to our next trip to a new National Park, but our next trip will be out of country to Cancun for our honeymoon. It will be my first "passport trip" - getting my passport was a highlight of the planning process. He's been to Cancun several times as a child, so it'll be like having a free tour guide - score!
I love to cook, and especially bake. He works for a major airline, and I am a Sales Lead for a prominent personal care product company. We moved to Denver, Colorado about a year ago and couldn't be happier with our decision. Of course, we both miss our families but since we fly free (gotta love those flight benefits), we go home as much as our work schedules will allow.
Here we are on the Grand Canyon Railway on our way from Williams, AZ (very cool little town, by the way) to Grand Canyon National Park.
This was about a year before our engagement.
Now, we live in Denver with our pets. . . to be fair, I'll list them in order of age. The patriarch of our animal kingdom is old man Max. We have no idea what kind of dog he is - mainly because I never did send off that DNA test to find out. And yes, they really do sell DNA tests to find out what breed your dog is, and we did indeed purchase one. Max is the most docile dog I've ever met. When Jakob's nephew was 18 months or so, he would climb all over Max, pulling his hair, yanking on his ears - and Max never so much as growled. He's been with Jakob since he was a pup. He and his sister, Diogi (pronounced Dee-Oh-Gee) were abandoned in a friend's front yard. Here he is, in all his lazy glory...
He's a 100 lb baby who is convinced he's a lap dog.
Next is Montana. She's a tortoise-shell tabby cat that Jakob found as a little bitty kitten in the parking garage of New Orleans International Airport, where he worked before we moved to Colorado. She now is pushing 15 pounds. She was named after the state of Montana, which I love to visit.
And then, there's the baby of the family, Simba. He's about 16 months old, by our best guess. Like all of our pets, he was a rescue, but technically we paid for him. He was found in a ditch with his mother & siblings. He's a Catahoula Leopard Dog, the state dog of Louisiana. Because the dogs are bred for function, not form, it is not a AKC recognized breed. He's the only one of his litter that looks like he does. He likes to help me when I'm editing my blog or posting on Weddingbee. And by "help," I actually mean he uses me as a pillow and whines when I move.
His brother Brooks lives in the same condo complex as we do. It was Brooks' "mom" who found the puppies on a trip to Louisiana. Her friend has been a long-time foster mom for dogs with CAAWS (Capital Area Animal Welfare Society). CAAWS took in the mom & all of the pups, finding homes for them. Kim adopted Brooks, and told Jakob the story. Since he knew I'd wanted a Catahoula puppy since I was little, he got the info & passed it along to me. I was able to complete the lengthy interview process and adopt Simba before the big move.
We moved to Colorado with one other pet - BooBoo, a gorgeous seal-point Siamese cat. He died of leukemia last December. His story was pretty interesting. When we lived in New Orleans, he was kind of the "neighborhood cat" - he'd been fixed & declawed, so at one point, he belonged to someone but we had no idea who his owner was. As we were preparing to evacuate before hurricane Katrina, we realized he was still there, and we were the last ones in the neighborhood. Everyone else had already left. There was no way we could leave him behind - we were sure the area would suffer a direct hit and thought he'd be a casualty in the aftermath. But taking him with us wouldn't be easy. We had made progress with BooBoo - he'd come close to us, but wouldn't allow us to pick him up - sometimes, we could pet him a bit. Jakob lured him with some kitty food & managed to grab him. We put him in the car with Max (we didn't have Montana or Simba at that point) and the two of them got a crash course on dog-cat relations on the long drive out of the city. BooBoo was with Jakob & me during a difficult time in our lives, and we'll always miss him.
I was born & raised in the small town of Robert, Louisiana. He grew up in the big city - New Orleans. Our unlikely meeting led to an even more unlikely courtship & an unexpected proposal. We love to travel, and have a special place in our hearts for National Parks. We've been to Grand Canyon National Park, Smoky Mountain National Park, and of course Rocky Mountain National Park, where we are members. We look forward to our next trip to a new National Park, but our next trip will be out of country to Cancun for our honeymoon. It will be my first "passport trip" - getting my passport was a highlight of the planning process. He's been to Cancun several times as a child, so it'll be like having a free tour guide - score!
I love to cook, and especially bake. He works for a major airline, and I am a Sales Lead for a prominent personal care product company. We moved to Denver, Colorado about a year ago and couldn't be happier with our decision. Of course, we both miss our families but since we fly free (gotta love those flight benefits), we go home as much as our work schedules will allow.
Here we are on the Grand Canyon Railway on our way from Williams, AZ (very cool little town, by the way) to Grand Canyon National Park.
This was about a year before our engagement.
Now, we live in Denver with our pets. . . to be fair, I'll list them in order of age. The patriarch of our animal kingdom is old man Max. We have no idea what kind of dog he is - mainly because I never did send off that DNA test to find out. And yes, they really do sell DNA tests to find out what breed your dog is, and we did indeed purchase one. Max is the most docile dog I've ever met. When Jakob's nephew was 18 months or so, he would climb all over Max, pulling his hair, yanking on his ears - and Max never so much as growled. He's been with Jakob since he was a pup. He and his sister, Diogi (pronounced Dee-Oh-Gee) were abandoned in a friend's front yard. Here he is, in all his lazy glory...
He's a 100 lb baby who is convinced he's a lap dog.
Next is Montana. She's a tortoise-shell tabby cat that Jakob found as a little bitty kitten in the parking garage of New Orleans International Airport, where he worked before we moved to Colorado. She now is pushing 15 pounds. She was named after the state of Montana, which I love to visit.
And then, there's the baby of the family, Simba. He's about 16 months old, by our best guess. Like all of our pets, he was a rescue, but technically we paid for him. He was found in a ditch with his mother & siblings. He's a Catahoula Leopard Dog, the state dog of Louisiana. Because the dogs are bred for function, not form, it is not a AKC recognized breed. He's the only one of his litter that looks like he does. He likes to help me when I'm editing my blog or posting on Weddingbee. And by "help," I actually mean he uses me as a pillow and whines when I move.
His brother Brooks lives in the same condo complex as we do. It was Brooks' "mom" who found the puppies on a trip to Louisiana. Her friend has been a long-time foster mom for dogs with CAAWS (Capital Area Animal Welfare Society). CAAWS took in the mom & all of the pups, finding homes for them. Kim adopted Brooks, and told Jakob the story. Since he knew I'd wanted a Catahoula puppy since I was little, he got the info & passed it along to me. I was able to complete the lengthy interview process and adopt Simba before the big move.
We moved to Colorado with one other pet - BooBoo, a gorgeous seal-point Siamese cat. He died of leukemia last December. His story was pretty interesting. When we lived in New Orleans, he was kind of the "neighborhood cat" - he'd been fixed & declawed, so at one point, he belonged to someone but we had no idea who his owner was. As we were preparing to evacuate before hurricane Katrina, we realized he was still there, and we were the last ones in the neighborhood. Everyone else had already left. There was no way we could leave him behind - we were sure the area would suffer a direct hit and thought he'd be a casualty in the aftermath. But taking him with us wouldn't be easy. We had made progress with BooBoo - he'd come close to us, but wouldn't allow us to pick him up - sometimes, we could pet him a bit. Jakob lured him with some kitty food & managed to grab him. We put him in the car with Max (we didn't have Montana or Simba at that point) and the two of them got a crash course on dog-cat relations on the long drive out of the city. BooBoo was with Jakob & me during a difficult time in our lives, and we'll always miss him.
posted by loralie 9 months ago