the hills are alive

In case you were thinking, "Man it has been too long since I've seen Bret or Whitney in a helmet" well Merry Christmas. That little speck halfway up the road is me and I'm glad you can't hear through film because my huffing and puffing was as loud as a 400lb man.

If you're ever looking for a beautiful place to ride your bike in Northern CA, I'd recommend Tamales to Dillon Beach, it is beautiful. And if you huff and puff all the way up the mountain, you're not alone.

It's Turkey Time

I don't mean that in the Thanksgiving sense, I mean, I look out my window in the mornings and there are turkeys wondering around my front yard. I keep trying to tell them that this is a really bad time for them to be flaunting their stuff. Bret almost hit one of the turkeys on his bike the other day. I can't imagine how rugged he would have looked had he hit it, then tied a little rope around its neck and brought it home tossed over his shoulder.

The Turkeys have become so popular that they made it into the Oakland Tribune, you can read about it here.

Get World

I was going to get Whitney a gift for her birthday, but there's a 98.4% chance that she would just take it back. So instead I gave her a card that read...

So we're gonna go on a trip. Any suggestions on where in the world we should go? The only exclusions are Antarctica and Las Vegas, anywhere else is fair game.

and by odd, I mean awesome

Today I saw a man driving a motorcycle that had 3 flag poles welded to it. I thought that was a little odd and then I saw that riding in his side cart was a golden retriever wearing goggles.

WORLD CHAMPS

When I saw the Giants bandwagon coming about two weeks ago, I decided to jump on. And boy did I! I had never watched a baseball game until two weeks ago and in the past few weeks, baseball is all we talk about in this part of town. Today a six year old won a coin guessing game and ran around the classroom doing this famous Brian Wilson pose, while another student chanted "FEAR THE BEAR, FEAR THE BEARD"
Those two six year olds aren't the only Wilson lovers, Bret too has an affinity for the beard, so much so that this was his pumpkin this year:
While I am now a big Giants fan, I thought it was kind of funny that the headline in the Tribune, in size 340 font, read WORLD CHAMPS!! The Giants have proved that they are the best baseball players, but can they really declare themselves world champs if they played another American team? Maybe they can, I'm new to this baseball business.

Conference Cloud

Since I usually only speak in superlatives on this blog, I'd have to say that the white cloud couch that can turn into a huge bed is by far the best purchase of our marriage.

#1

My number one all-time favorite thing to do in the whole world is to see things I've never seen before. More specifically places I have never seen. They don't have to be famous, or glamorous, or international, you can drive me through a suburb of Sacramento and my heart will beat fast. Well this past week Bret and I went on a business trip and I got to see lots of things I had never seen, such as:


Kenosha, Wisconsin (I've also never seen myself stand so awkwardly for a photo)

The Chicago River (I may have seen this when I was 14 but I didn't remember it)
I had never seen a man randomly wearing the exact same outfit as Monica and carrying his purse on the same shoulder
I had never tasted a donut this large or this good or from such a ghetto place
I also tasted the best pizza of my life (I didn't take a picture of the pizza, but this is us standing outside the pizza place)

I've also never seen a warehouse stacked to the ceiling with boxes and had to sort through 850 boxes and count over 17,000 items.

Bret's Boot Has Seen Better Days

This past weekend Bret capsized in a kayak and had to crawl out of the water... but don't worry he had his boot on so his foot didn't break anymore, just a lot of seaweed caught in the velcro and an incredible amount of sand soaked into the neoprene part.

Ode to Sequoia

Ode to Sequoia from Bret Baker on Vimeo.

Oops

Yesterday I tried giving money to a homeless man, turns out he wasn't homeless. At least I didn't try and give him food?

YotCM

Year of the...

Bret and I are yet again commemorating another year of marriage. I feel like these years are just flying by and we're constantly having family meetings (me and bret laying on the couch) about what the new theme will be. You may remember from the past that Bret and I give themes to every year, in case you forgot here are some past posts to jog your memory:
year of the granola,
year of the expolorer, year of the explorer pt. 1
progress report

While the real theme of this year should probably be "year of the stop eating peanutbutter m&ms and get a job" that just doesn't seem like a lot of fun so we have deemed it "Year of the Creative Mind". What does that entail, you ask? Well, we're gonna get our creative on. To inspire us we watched THIS (get on google chrome, close all your other programs and follow the instructions) and get ready to have your mind blown. While neither of us are html or creative geniuses, it's inspiring to see something like that, and we hope throughout the year we can continue to say, "WHAAATT??" or maybe say something more creative than that as we explore the creativity in the world around us.

Year of the Creative Mind will also entail:
- making more quilts (including one that is a map of the world!), making weird, ahem, creative recipes i have never done before, and possibly painting
-bret will make his graphic design website
- we're going to study creative people by reading their biographies, watching videos about them, etc.
- we're going to use creative budgeting to go on an international trip
-for every vacation/staycation we do we will try and create something as a piece of memorabilia
- we're going to go to concerts of very creative musicians (okay, well actually we bought tickets for arcade fire and sufjan a long time ago and i've been sort of mumbling about the price of these, but when we came up with the theme, these tickets just made even more sense).
- who knows maybe I'll open an etsy shop (is that considered creative anymore?)

If you have any recommendations of creative vacations, people, topics, or projects we should look into, please let me know. Also, I'm sure this year will probably have more creative failures than successes, as most of my creative endeavors do and I'll be happy to share those with you.

Post Edit of Mr. August

Just as I was pressing "publish post" on the picture below I got a call from Bret saying he twisted his ankle a little and I might need to pick him up. Turns out that while I was posting embarrassing pictures of him on the internet he was breaking his fibula. I tried to get him to show off his cast in a picture by only wearing a volleyball but he would have no part in it.

Mr. August

While scrolling through some old pictures I came across this one. I never realized that it looks like bret is only wearing a volleyball. I laughed really hard by myself and Bret is gone all night so he's not here to tell me not to post this. It's just too good to pass up.

I Floss My Teeth Daily

I'm not scared of many things, you could put some spiders on me while a snake is wrapped around my arm in the dark and I'd be okay, maybe. If you mention the dentist, my whole body tightens and I feel sick to my stomach. It's a fear I've had since childhood, maybe since Dr. Gordon told me I never brushed my teeth and to get out of his office (I do brush my teeth and I always have, I can't help my genetics though). He meant it, and I had to pick my 8 year old body out of the dental chair and walk out of his office never to return again.

Let's fast forward to present day. Bret and I went on a date to the dentist the other night. I thought if I threw in the word "date" or "activity" I could trick myself. Our dentist in Alameda is truly a family operated business. When you call it is the 16 year old's cell phone and when you walk in the mom is doing the cleaning, dad doing the dental work, daughters running the front office, and son tending the dog that is running around the dental office... is that even allowed? The family-ness doesn't stop there, today while getting my teeth drilled the Dr. was yelling at the daughter to turn off the refrigerator and I could see her standing in front of it with her bum-crack showing, and she wasn't even bending down... I though this might lead into a family discussion on professionalism in the work place but instead another daughter came in wearing a hot topic t-shirt ready to assist her dad. They also handed me "protection goggles" i.e. sunglasses from TJ Maxx, so in the chaos, everything was extremely dim. I think this dental scenario might frighten some people but when I was there the teeth drilling was my last concern and therefor I think I will return.

"I'll be right down"

I'm not really sure of what I want in the future (should I be admitting that?) but I do know I want this...
which I guess requires having kids and money. Neither of which I have right now so I guess I have to put those two things in the future plan.
picture found here

summmaa timmeee

Last night as Bret and I got home from an 8 hour drive I said, "we better make sure to get the caramel chexmix and all our food wrappers out of the car because of the bears". We've pretty much been on vacation for the past month and some of that has included time in the wilderness where we feared every night that our car doors would be ripped off due to a french fry under a seat or a hot tamale in the cup holders. Luckily no car doors or tent doors were ripped off during the past month.

Anna did a good job summing up our trip to Sequoia but she forgot to mention that although I only had about 12 troops left on the risk board, I was still planning world domination. Here are some more pics.



Then Rhett and Mon swung by and she took some pics too.. as seen here

Utah was next on the docket, a summer must do for any Mormon. It was everything I could have hoped for.

We also headed back to girls camp to take a group of 15 year old girls backpacking for three days. The girls all squealed when they realized I could totally decipher their coded language to talk about boys.... they didn't realize that I too spent my formative years talking in code about boyz. Oh and there was snow in July, but it was still a good time and Bret caught a fish that the gutted and fried, such a man.


Finally we went down to Huntington Beach to meet up with family and friends. I think we slept a total of 10 hours in the 4 days we were there.

I love Hawaii and Shave Ice and Bret- In That Order

Don't let my mullet and sweat pants gathered at the ankle distract you too much from the glory of Hawaii. In case you were under some false impression that I was at all cool, this video will prove otherwise. And can I give another "what what" to Bret with his video taping genius, and that baby... Ms. Brooke Muff, greatest adventure baby in the world.


Ode to Hawaii from Bret Baker on Vimeo.

Come On Over

Today while walking through the park I saw two boys playing monkey in the middle, but instead of a child or a friend as the "monkey in the middle" there was this huge german shepherd. I laughed out loud while walking alone. German Shepherd in the middle? maybe the worst idea ever. I only stuck around long enough to watch the dog attack one guy's leg and I decided I had had enough.

On another note, I spent the past 730 days scouring craigslist for a white sectional couch with skinny legs, and low and behold two pot-smoking, mid-twenties oaklandites had one in their apartment and on Saturday they sold it to us, two non pot-smoking mid-twenty alamedians. It's 7ft x 8ft of pure joy. You, your mom and sister and german shepherd could all fit on it. Laying down.
please disregard the wall heater

If I act a fool on the bus, I can't go on no field trip

Every time I announce something in class that my students don't like or say no to something there is always one student, Kaliyah, who says "Ahhh dat's jus coolld". One Monday morning she came bouncing in SO proud of herself and presented me with a drawing she had been doing all weekend...

Richie Rich

A few weeks ago at school one of my students said, "Ms. Baker when I first saw you today I thought you were a man". Note to self- don't wear baggy shirts to work. When I looked in the mirror later in the day I realized I did kind of look like a man, but not just any man, I looked just like my dad. The main difference was I was wearing stretch pants with my baggy collared shirt, and my dad usually wears jeans pulled up to his belly button.

Happy Birthday Dad, I'm glad I inherited some of my looks from you and also the tendency to move my mouth when I'm thinking.

Buckle Your Seatbelts

As I have said before, I make a lot of bold statements like, "Bret, I wouldn't eat at Applebees if that is where they held your funeral". Most of these are obviously false, but when I made the statement that we would make a theme to every year of our marriage, and this is year of the learner, I was serious. So I will now give a nine month progress report of how our learning is coming along. I will being doing this in bullet point fashion as I have been told many-a-time that people read bullet points much more often than paragraphs, so for your reading ease:

-I've learned a lot about the urban education system and in three weeks I will have a California Teaching Credential and 1/3 of my masters (I didn't know until two weeks ago this thing was a partial masters program, and it suddenly made sense because it has been insanely time consuming)

-Bret has learned a little about design and in a couple of weeks will be a certificated graphic designer and will be moonlighting with some graphic design projects

-We decided to learn about all of the regional and state park systems within three hours of us so if you are interested in going to Briones Regional Park, Las Trampas Regional Park, Pt. Reyes National Seashore, Muir Woods, Redwood Regional Park, Big Basin Redwoods State Park, Sibley Volcanic Reserve, The Forest of Nisene Marks State Park, Sunol Regional Wilderness, and any other state/regional park you can find on google maps, we may have some tips as we have spent some serious time at each of them.

-We learned that the bacon sandwiches we eat at least twice a week contain 900 calories, then we laughed and continued eating them. Sometimes ignorance is bliss, but in this case, i have full fat content knowledge and those sandwiches are still pure bliss.

-We learned that you can go caming in Hawaii in a VW camper van parked in the middle of nowhere and not be killed... see the following picture:

Ode to Alameda

You may remember a little video Bret made one night when I went to bed early.

We felt it was time for a second edition dedicated to our hometown... The Island City of Alameda (and by we, I mean Bret, he's the one with the skillz).

Ode to Alameda from Bret Baker on Vimeo.

Some Really Great People

I promise this willl not become a birthday post only type blog, but I have put everything on hold in life until March 31st, including this blog. Why? Nothing exciting, just busy-ness.

But I have not put birthdays on hold and on March 15th, two very important birthdays take place.

I'm usually a birthday fanatic, I LOVE holidays, especially the personal type but like I said before I put most things on hold, so this year bret got a hatchet for his birthday. Happy Birhday Bret, you're my favorite human being on the planet. Enjoy your hatchet/tomahawk

And Lindsay Lark, your present will be coming a week late. You're really great. I wish you were here so we could play dodgeball with juggling hacky-sacks and you could beat me at board games.

The way my heart races it's like I'm competing in the games

I think Shaun White should have to compete against animals or some kind of extra terrestrial being because no human can match his awesomeness.

I'm Alright Lee Carter!

Whatever you're doing you should stop right now and watch Son of Rambo. Twice. I think it came out awhile ago so maybe everyone has already seen it, but no one told me about it. It's adorable. Any other good movies I should be aware of?

Important Things

Sometimes I wish I could just have a real quick conversation with my sister so I could ask her questions like, "How do you grow your hair out from a pixie?" Because right now i have a mullet.
anyone have any suggestions? Oh and the reason I look pregnant in this picture is because uh?? I don't know why.

Spoiler Alert

Somehow I went 24 years without ever seeing any Star Wars films or Gone With the Wind. However, this has been fixed. What is SO COMPLETELY baffling to me is that Luke and Leia are siblings? How did that never leak out to me. What was even more shocking was that Scarlett O'Hara is pretty much the worst human ever.

I went into Star Wars thinking Luke and Leia were totally going to hook it up and I thought Scarlette O'Hara was going to be a loving, powerful woman. I can't imagine what surprises Lord of the Rings has in store for me.

I saw this on a car parked outside

Happy MLK Day

Mustache + New Camera Toy = Most Triumphant

Everything is funnier while wearing a mustache

Looking back on these pictures, I realize that I probably felt nauseous at the Mystery Spot because I ate a glazed twist and a 2 lb burrito before 1:00pm.

So Mysterious

I have been seeing this bumper sticker my entire life so Bret and I decided to go to Santa Cruz and see what it was all about. The most shocking thing is that when you step inside you feel really nauseous all of a sudden. But despite the nausea, we really enjoyed it. I also liked how it was ran completely by teenagers and two men that stood in the parking lot arguing with each other for the entire 1.5 hours we were there, mysterious indeed.