Year 3

If I had to rank the years of marriage thus far: 1. Year of the Granola and 2. Year of the Explorer, I would say it's a tie. I realize this is kind of an anticlimactic ranking since we've only been married two years, but they were both pretty great. I should probably let Bret vote as well because he might vote Year 1 higher than Year 2 because during Year of the Explorer I might have ended some of our explorations crying and saying something along the lines of, "I have pushed my limits, this is no longer fun". But I don't take pictures of those moments so when I look back at my albums it just looks like a constant stream of bike rides, road trips, and happy faces.

Year of the Explorer had some pretty good moments, we got to explore the South, camp in multiple locations across California, acquire road bikes and ride them through unbelievable places, eat at new hole in the wall restaurants, buy an all wheel drive vehicle, read about some very interesting explorers, and I'm pretty sure we would have discovered a new country if Spain was funding out expeditions. Here are some pics, if you're not so much into the words:

As year 3 begins, we have decided to declare it Year of the Learner. You might be thinking, 'that's awfully close to year of the explorer' but it is VERY different. So different it required capital letters.

We're excited not just to go places but to learn about them. To stop and read all the plaques at the large trees or museums. We are also both back in school, well school of sorts, and we're going to learn how to do a whole plethora of things, so watch yo' backs. If you have any recommendations of things we should be learning about, do let me know. Or if you are an expert in a certain field, you're welcome to come over any time and give us a guest lecture.

Call me Neil Armstrong

It kind of looks like we're on the moon in this picture. Except it's daytime and we're not in moonsuits.
and this is what a dead seal would look like on the moon. Sad and gross and kind of amazing that a seal made it to the moon.

A new family member

I think they should have a class in high school called "Real Life Situations". This class would be what it sounds like, you reenact different situations that are most likely going to come up in real life.

As nice as it is that I can tell you the quadratic equation or whip out MLA and APA format like it ain't no thang, it doesn't come in handy very often in my adult life. Maybe one of the lessons in the class could be "How to memorize a 7 digit license plate in 10 seconds" for the times in your life that you get in a hit and run accident when you do the hitting and they do the running and then an officer comes and you say "it was all my fault" because you feel nervous and then realize that it probably wasn't all your fault and the person probably ran because they were on drugs. Or ya know, other hypothetical situations.

Maybe in this class they could explain insurance jargon and tell you that sales tax is different in every county and you may live in a county with 9.75% sales tax and when you go to buy a car the price that is listed is VERY different then the price when you actually walk out of the place. I feel like maybe if I had been braced for some of these real life situations they wouldn't be such a slap in the face when they happen.

But nonetheless through my "real life situations" I was able to decipher the car and insurance lingo and we purchased a car... Bret and I welcome Subjan(sub-yahn) Baker into the family:

Into the Wild

Year of the Explorer wouldn't have been complete had we not taken a bunch of 15 year old girls backpacking and camping for a week.



In this last picture we're not that sweaty, it started raining. The highlight was probably when one of the girls, Ginger, brought only poptarts to eat and proceeded to eat 42 of them and then swing on the rope swing into the lake over 20 times until she almost killed herself and I had to ban her from the rope. Or when Kadijah did a bellyflop into the lake and then stepped in human pooh.