Happy Halloween

There are a lot of things in life that I'm grateful for... but mainly this.

Year Of The...

About a year ago Bret and I decided that if we were to ever get married we would want to have a theme to every year of our life. Since we got married on September 1st, each year instead of "going back to school" we will celebrate our new theme. We 're going to incorporate the theme into weekend activities, birthdays, gifts, holidays, vacations, books we read, meals, and wherever we can in everyday life. We think that this will accomplish our overall goal in life (being weird).

Here is a sample of the themes we came up with...

-Year of the Intellect: In this year Bret or I will study for the GMAT or gre, make complicated foods, read books about art and philosophy, learn to paint, learn a new instrument, travel to strange places, go see guest lecturers at Berkeley, and any other activity that seems like something intellectual people do

-Year of America: We're going to get really into America and hopefully drive cross country. We'll learn all America songs, visit national monuments, read books by American authors, become serious gardeners (america's #1 hobby), and eat American foods i.e. crock pot meals, hot dogs, corn on the cob, etc.

-Year of the fix-it: We're going to fix up either a VW van or a house, whichever fits better into our budget. We're going to read inspirational- fix-up books, do a lot of DIY projects, read domino and blueprint magazines religiously, visit man-made wonders (mount Rushmore and others), and other fixer upper activities. I won't bore you with any of our other brain-stormed plans but I will present this years theme...

YEAR OF THE GRANOLA
This year Bret and I are going to become granolas, this includes camping, hiking, rock-climbing, canoeing, eating GORP aka trail mix (we're going to start using granola lexicon too), reading books by other hippiesh people, do triathlons, wear chacos, have a no electricity week, be vegans for a week, ride bikes to work, and any other granola type activities... we're up for recommendations and/or guest lecturers to come visit us and give us their expertise.

There are some things that we will NOT being doing with our fellow granolas such as:

-getting a mutt dog and tying a bandanna around its neck
-smoking marijuana
-burning incense
-getting dreads (well that's still undecided)
- wearing ridiculous amounts of hemp

To kick off our year, we went camping in San Rafael. We had a good time eating tin foil meals and s'mores, setting up our tent, watching the lone lady at the campsite next to ours get high and go into her tent, hiking, making choclate oatmeal over the fire, and wearing Lindsay's rain slicker. Here are some pics from our weekend:

We have found that granola's do not have a woop hair do' so Bret now has a sidepart

The best part of the whole trip was when we came home and went into the city and it happened to be the "love parade", probably the best/sickest thing i've ever seen, women dancing on floats with their nippies painted gold and guys pouring champaign off of the float to the people on the streets. I always thought that love was how you felt towards your family and friends, I didn't know that you expressed it by taking off your shirt and getting low on a moving truck in public, apparently the city has a lot to teach me.

Honeymoonin' to the max

I would like to announce to the world that despite plane delays due to typhoons, eating during tsunami warnings, backpacking in 100 degree weather with 100% humidity (because we were too cheap to get a taxi), and even a plane wreck in Phuket, the Bakers have made it home safely. It actually wasn't until our last two days that we even got rained on (but I think Thailand is where the phrase originated, "when it rains, it pours"). For the most part we frolicked and giggled in weather and scenery that is seen in the photograph. We also ate our way through the country and justified any ridiculous activity with "it's our honeymoon".


As any reader could imagine, we collected a whole boat load of memories. We will try and remember some of our favorite moments and gather up some pics from our trip which included backpacking across almost every inch of Thailand on trains, planes, boats, kayaks, bamboo rafts, rickshaws, elephants, pickup truck beds, and taxis. We even got to walk through the ocean when the tide was low with all our gear because the long tail boat man didn't want to go any further in fear he wouldn't be able to get back to sea. We almost didn't make it through the ocean because I was hungry and wet and probably had to go to the bathroom which led to me (whitney) being furious and cursing everyone in Thailand and Bret. But once I got in a hot shower and ate some fries and sweet and sour chicken I was back in happy honeymoon mood. We'll write more about our lives later, but just to give you a glimpse, in the first month of marriage we have managed to...
Shatter the hall window of our rented victorian house with our couch we hoisted up the stairs, there w was even a point where Bret was shouting "PIVOT, PIVOT"

Buy 10lbs of trailmix including mixes from Costco, Target, and Trader Joes (we're using our giftcards very i wisely)

Still not get a mattress and sleep on camping pads every night

Have my VW get very sick and need some mechanical help, but when I jogged over to pick it up, all our credit/ d debit cards got denied which led me to look very destitute. The car is still in the mechanics garage .

For those of you that don't want to wait for a post, you can check out all of our pics HERE.

P.S. I don't know why there is that W I D down the left side, just ignore it, or make it into an acronym