October for the Barkers

So it turns out we are the worst bloggers ever... not really that much of a shock haha. However, I do maintain that the fact that we haven't blogged in 8 months is Matt's fault. He said he would do the next one and never did haha.

Anyway since my last blog Matt graduated with a bachelor's degree in English...

we have moved to Illinois...

I have started working as a receptionist at an Orthodontist office...

and Matt has been hard at work looking for a job. We are loving it here in Illinois and have done a couple fun things this month I thought I would share.

The first thing we did was go camping. We went to Shawnee National Forest. Which is about 3 hours south of where we live. We just went for one night but it was a lot of fun and very relaxing!

The second thing I wanted to share was our ward's Trunk or Treat. We both love Halloween and have been excited about dressing up for it this year, because we couldn't come up with anything fun last year. So we decided to dress up as Charlie Brown and the Little Red-Haired Girl. For those of you who are not familiar with Peanuts, the Little Red-Haired Girl is the girl Charlie Brown always had a crush on. He is always talking about "that little red-haired girl" haha. However, she only actually shows up in the cartoon a couple times. The most famous is the homecoming episode where she gives Charlie Brown his first kiss (on the cheek). Now, the Trunk or Treat took place at a farm and I did not want to wear a Homecoming dress on a hayride haha. So instead I wore a pink shirt and white sweater and put little freckles on my face, to dress up like her. We had so much fun seeing everyone dressed up!

Pond Skimming

So this weekend Matt and I decided to go watch a fun BYU-Idaho tradition... Pond Skimming. For any of you who do not know what this is let me explain.

Pond Skimmers start at the top of a slope and donning skis, snowboard, or really anything that will take them down the hill (recliners, sleds etc.), they attempt to make it down a hill and skim across a pond at the bottom. In our case, at BYU-I, the pond is more of a man-made pool, about 3 feet deep and about 30 feet long. In most cases (at least at BYU-I) they do not make it all the way across the pool, resulting in a comical crash and splash into the pool. Now keep in mind this is all done in the middle of winter so what provokes them to try this is beyond me. Many of the skimmers also wear some sort of crazy costume. Then at the end there is an award ceremony.

So Matt and I decided to go watch this crazy event on Friday of last week, unfortunately they ended an hour and a half before they said they were going to so Matt and I only got to see a couple of the people attempt it. It was still a lot of fun though!

This is the hill and the "pond" that the event takes place on

Matt and I after everyone had cleared out

Here is a video of the Highlights from 2009s Pond Skimming at BYU-I.

My Laptop Got Sick

So I was planning on getting on this week and doing 1 post with everything Matt and I have done for the past couple months, just to catch up. So in preparation for this on Tuesday I put all the pictures on our camera onto my computer then I deleted them all off my camera so I would have room for new ones. Then on wednesday night (before I started writing the post) my computer froze so I turned it off and when I went to turn it back on all I was getting was a blinking folder with a question mark on it. Apparently, this happens on macs sometimes and it can mean many different things... unfortunately for me it meant the worst. My hard drive on my computer had died. So despite our best efforts to salvage the data, I lost everything. All my pictures (including the ones I had just put on the day before and deleted of the camera), music, everything assignment I have ever done in college had all disappeared. I guess this teaches me to back up my computer often. So I took my computer in to get it fixed and they put a new hard drive in it so it is all better... just empty. So this means I don't really have any fun pictures to post right now. However, Matt and I are going to do some fun stuff this weekend and we will take pictures so I will be posting some time next week again! Sorry, I don't have anything fun to post just yet!

rebecca

Welcome!

We finally got a blog!!! We have been talking about it for months now, and we finally decided to sit down together and do it. We are both really excited about starting this up and getting to tell everyone about what is going on in our lives. Since we are both writers, we will most likely both be contributing posts to this blog, both separately and together. This blog will be a collection of things going on in our lives and also just random thoughts we are having, so look forward to lots of silliness. We hope you enjoy and make comments often!

matt&rebecca