Book Update

***Must Read
** Pretty Good
* Skip It








**Neverwhere- Very strange, "Alice and Wonderland" on acid

***The Road- Wow! Post-apocalyptic journey of a father and son, that makes you want to work on your food storage.








***The Other Boleyn Girl- Now I'm obsessed with this time period. I've watched tons of documentaries, and spent alot of time on wikipedia. Since the entire book is focused on getting a male heir, its not for the prudish.








* The Ultimate Gift- Just watch the movie, a feel gooder.









* Stardust- Just watch the movie, the book is horrible.






*** The Boleyn Inheritance. Henry the 8th's, 4th and 5th wife, extremely interesting. Again not for the prudish.









* Lovely Bones- I heard so many good things about this book, but I only made it half way, skipped the rest and read the last chapter. Sorry!








*** Ptolemy's Gate- 3rd book in the Batimaeus trilogy. It was my favorite. Magicians meet a Genie.








*** Complications- I'm so proud of myself I read a non-fiction book! Ok, I had to read it for book club, but I'm sooo glad that I did. It reads like fiction and opens your eyes to the world of doctors. And I'm not talking about watching Jack on "Lost."









** Tuesdays with Morrie- Again, heard so much about the book, but to tedious for me.








**The Sweet Far Thing- 3rd book after "Great and Terrible Beauty" and "Rebel Angels". Loved the first two, but this was a disappointing conclusion. Could have done with only 350 pages not 700.








* Silas Marner- Tried to pick up a classic. Only read 3 pages and decided I'm not a literary enough. Thanks though!

More Sun

It's so nice to be able to go outside and not just tolerate the weather, but enjoy it! We spent some time gardening, weeding and playing outside. This was a beautiful weekend. It was quite enjoyable just working the land, so to speak. There was no pressure to make it better than someone else. No competition, no judgment from others, no hustle and bustle. Just quiet, hard work to pour yourself into for a few hours. It was blissful.
Listening to the 178th Annual General Conference of the Church also added to the beauty of the weekend. It was an interesting conference for me, since President Hinckley wasn't there. He's been the prophet for most of my formative years. He was the prophet of my youth. When the new prophet, President Monson, spoke, I almost expected him to sound like Pres. Hinckley or give a talk patterned like he used to give. But it when Pres. Monson spoke, he was still just Elder Monson. He told stories in his usual way, and had the usual inflections to his voice and animations in his face. He was the same man, he just carries a new mantle of power and responsibility. I am so glad there is a prophet on the earth today. Someone who can number himself among Moses, Elijah, Isaiah, Peter, and Paul. Someone to lead and guide us in these crazy times. That was what I loved the most about this conference.

As for other news, my Qualifying Exam has been delayed which is fine, but a bit of an annoyance. I was so ready to take it and get it out of the way. I haven't been as attentive to my other classes because I've been so worried about this Exam. Hopefully I can take it soon. The other pressing concern on the family has been finding an apartment in Boston for the summer. Celeste has been glued to craigslist every day scouring the listings. We've found a few great places but the people are slow to respond. Maybe they're just not as anxious to make a decision as we are.

Celeste is super excited about seeing her soon-to-be returned missionary sister. Just two weeks and she'll be living it up in Colorado and Nevada, leaving me at home alone.

Brooklyn is walking! She is so cute as she patiently learns to walk around the house. She is a bright ray of joy in our lives.

The Birthday, The Birthday

After a crazy week back from Spring Break (Spring What? What's a b-r-e-a-k?) full of devastating test scores, debilitating sicknesses, and the never-ending grind of school, it was time for a birthday bash.

And boy did we bash it! The partying was non-stop this weekend and celebrations arose at every level. There were
Friends Galore:


Secret Trysts:

Wounded Warriors:(picture a dramatization of actual events)

And Happy Families.

All in all a great birthday party. I scored on the loot this year as well.

From my twin bro: More Heroscape stuff! The best is the Lexan map. We used it this weekend and it adds so much more to the board-building process. Gives me more to work with.

From the wife: A sweet new laptop-carrying backpack, new khaki pants, and pajama pants. Always the practical, essential gifts. (She knows I'll never buy them for myself, even though I need them).

From myself: Just like any other self-respecting husband, I had to spend money on myself for my birthday. So using my REI dividend, I picked up an ultimate frisbee and a Kleen Kanteen, for all that healthy livin'. (Thanks Snows for the tip.) I also purchased some comic books....yes, comic books...that I've been craving for a while.

From the parents: Cold, hard cash! And a shirt!

Not. too. shabby.

Here's a conversation Austin and I had about our 27th birthday...
Austin: happy birthday foo
me: happy birthday yourself
way to be 27
Austin: crazy huh
i feel so old!
me: i only feel kinda old. i still love kid stuff so much, that it's hard to feel old
like comic books, video games, and candy
Austin: that's true ;)
although I feel like a bum since I am 27 and still in school....
with no career and no house
me: meh

And that pretty much sums up how I felt about the big 2-7.

"Springtime the Only Pretty Ring Time"

Brooklyn is now enthralled with the outside world after a cold harsh winter.

Brooklyn checking out the squirrels and birds eating


Brooklyn enjoying the strolling for the first time.


Lookin out the front window with daddy.

New Hairs

Last Saturday, we got our hairs done. Brad is sporting the new sexy look- the fauxhawk.
And Celeste with a more mysterious looking brown. Brooklyn is just growing longer hairs.

Brooklyn Ambulating

Geeking Out

I've said it before in previous posts, but Heroscape has become my new official hobby. I like the game so much. It's not just a fun game to play with the family and friends, but a creative outlet away from the stressful semester responsibilities.

This weekend, to quote a friend, I completely crossed the line into nerd-dom. I went online to HSCodex.com and found some sweet instructions on how to build your own custom bridge. The creator's original design was a samurai bridge, which looked amazing. My craft skills aren't up to par, so I just went with the basics. Still, I thought it turned out pretty well, and I can't wait to use it.

My next project will have to be either homemade trees, derelict buildings, or some other line-of-sight blocker.

Enjoy the pics!

Playtime

The toys that you buy for your children are usually more work then you bargain for.

Tagged!

I've been tagged three times so now I'm making up for it

Megan's Tag:

How long have you been together?
Oct, 11 2004 First Kiss, 3 1/2 years

Who said "I Love you" first?
Brad did, after that I said- "I love you sometimes."

Who is smarter?
Brad- Has anyone seen his math books?

Who Pays the Bills?
Brad- and I just nag him about it.

Who Cooks Dinner?
Always me, he tried once when I was sick, and I ended up taking over anyway.

Who drives when you're in the car together?
We switch off. I drive to fast for Brad, and he drives to slow for me.


Julie's and Kirsten's Tag-
Thing's you might not know about me/ Facts about me

1. I can't say words that end with "ng". "Song" is sonn, "sing" is scene, hanger is hanner. My acting and voice teachers told me I could never become a professional actress unless I fixed the problem.

2.I bite my nails incessantly. In fact I HATE any white of the nail showing at all, I bit it off as soon as a can. I've tried to quit 3 times, the longest I ever went was 8 weeks.

3. I like to have my cupboards and fridge as bare as possible. I hate extra food hanging around. I like to see everything that I have, and try to plan meals around get rid of food. I love the day before I go to the store, because my fridge is empty, and hate when I have to put new food in it.

4. I've seen the filmed version of "CATS" the musical at least 40 times. My freshman year of college, every night, my best friend Erin and I would put on "cat" clothing and dance to the movie.We have every dance memorized.
I didn't date a whole lot that year.

5. I constantly misspell the words: didn't (diddn't), film (flim), girl (gril),and their (thier). I even misspelled some of these words right now- trying to get them correct.

6. Where other girls might shy away, I LOVE to kill spiders/bugs/moths or any creeping crawling thing. I like the thrill of crushing potentially dangerous bugs that want to suck my blood.

Well I'm not going to tag anyone, because Brad said that tagging was "something that girls do when their bored." (I just misspelled "their"- thank you spell checker). So I'm sending out a general invitation, if you would like to share this information on your blog, I would love to read it.

Laptopia

Welcome to the exclusive world of business professionals, and gadget technophiles!

How long have I awaited this day? How many years pining in silence, while my counterparts increased their productivity around me? How many analog hours, wishing for digital freedom?

Thank you ZaReason. You are the waters of Horeb to this Israelite.


Check the link for more laptop pics.



In completely unrelated news, Celeste signed us up for Club Disney to take advantage of the cheap intro deals. So we're on our way to the poor house... just kidding! We'll cancel sooner or later, but we're trying to pick up some classic disney DVDs while we still can.

This years' family pic

New Tricks

Some new tricks I've learned:

Climbing stairs.


Making snow angels.


Multi-tasking while eating toast.

Get Caught Up

So we've been a little slow to get back into the swing of things here. We've been neglecting our blogosphere responsibilities. So please forgive us as we give you an extra-long blog packed full with delicious experiences, just like a stuffed pepper.

First off, the new semester is upon us. My classes are: Convex Methods/Robust Control, Random Processes, and Mechatronics. They're all 3 impressive sounding titles so feel free to be intimidated by my intellectual prowess. Be sure and comment on it the next time we see each other too.

Second amazing news is our Boston plans. I was offered an internship with Kiva Systems in Woburn, MA. I enthusiastically accepted! So we are busying ourselves with budget concerns and apartment shopping. Needless to say, it'll be expensive. But we're excited for our east coast adventure!

Third piece of Baillio-life trivia: Heroscape has come to overwhelm all of my senses. I can't get enough of it. I'm glad I finally have a hobby that interests me when I'm at home, and which can be enjoyed by my family and friends. I have in fact reverted into an 11-year-old boy who frequents the toy isles in Target and Walmart searching for that extra expansion pack. A little to my shame, I've "invested" a substantial amount of money into this hobby in the short 3 weeks since we returned from Christmas vacation. Oh well, it's an enjoyable (and endurable) pastime. My latest favorite characters are Utgar's Kyrie followers. They're pretty great, especially teamed up with Khosumet the Darklord. 'Nough said.

On to family matters.
Brooklyn is crawling now, and she morphed into an entirely different child. She is adorable still, and loves to get all over everything. The most wonderful part is her new-found independence. She can roam around and play on her own! That gives Celeste at least a little extra time to get things done during the day. Awesome. The most fun is when Celeste and I lay on the ground, Brooklyn rushes over to climb all over us, giggling all the way. It's great!


Lastly, we took our family picture yesterday. Family will get a copy asap. Brooklyn did wonderfully, and of course, looked super cute.

Crisis in the Mile-High City

Post Christmas and New Years with the Barrands was a blast as well. We passed the New Year in the middle of a battle royal in Heroscape (our new favorite game). Kisses, bubbly, and Sudema stone-gazing Captain America. Now that's a New Years Celebration!

With the Barrand clan, we had so much fun playing Heroscape, eating foods, taking the family picture and visiting Aquariums. It was a wonderful chance for Brooklyn to meet her cousins again. She loved hanging out with Sam and Jensen and watched them move around and play.

The most exciting part of our Barrand family plans was our coveted trip to Costa Rica. I say coveted because as I write it, I know you are filled with insane jealousy. And rightly so! Well covet no more because it fell through! "How did it fall through?" you ask. Because of carelessness. We showed up at the airport for the red-eye flight on the 2nd of January, and our flight left at 12:10 am on the 2nd of January. We missed our flight by almost a full day! What losers.

Our fantastic holiday plans were shattered. I watched all that Univision for nothing! In our depression the following day, we rose from the ashes and pulled a last-minute vacation out of the air. So we will spend a few days in Breckenridge, enjoying the freezing cold, the snow, the slopes, and more Heroscape. It's better than nothing! And the good news is, we can still use our Costa Rica tickets sometime in the next year. So maybe we'll try again for next December.

View all pics

Fun in the Sun, for Christmas

Texas is the best place to be for Christmas, especially when you live in a dark and dreary wasteland like Illinois. There was sun, and nice weather, and leaves on trees. It was perfect. It was so nice, in fact, that we took a road trip our second day there to see some quaint old towns. We stopped by Bandera, TX and Fredericksburg, TX. We sat by a beautiful river, laughed at the utterly Texan nativities, and ate some scrumptious German food.

Living in Illinois reminded me how un-flat Texas is. They do call it the Texas Hill Country for a good reason. Being as such, I recommended we take a quick drive from Fredericksburg to Enchanted Rock. It was our 'mountain' growing up. It's not really a mountain, but more of a really huge granite dome that is fun to climb. So we did. It was so beautiful and we saw a tarantula. It was quite a perfect closing to our road trip.

The rest of the Christmas holiday was enjoyable as well. We ate delicious food at home, opened a few gifts, bought some fun books. We went to the Riverwalk again, and ate at Casa Rios. It has the best Mexican food ever! It was also very fun to see Megan, Kyle and Hallee again. Brooklyn played in the bathtub with Hallee and of course we snapped a couple pics. All in all it was a fantastic 9 days in comfortable San Antonio!

View the pics

Done!

I'm done with finals and one more semester. I feel like I've learned so much! Especially about State Space Representation and Control. Too bad my final exam experience didn't make me feel that way! Goo, that was one hard final.

Tis the Season

So I hate to post too many things right in a row, especially when it involves pictures of my cute kid. I don't want anyone to miss out on those. So if you haven't yet seen the "Apple a Day..." post, go read it first.

Ok. Back again? Great. Tis the season to celebrate cold weather, final exams, and Christmas! These past two weeks we have been hit with a sharp cold front and the temperature has dropped a lot. It finally snowed a couple times. Hurray for first snow! However, the snow isn't the bad part about Illinois weather. It's the wind and ice that come later. Despite my bitter resentment for the hated Illinois winter, I was put in awe this afternoon after church. I pulled into the neighborhood, on the way home, and was delighted by the leafy trees welcoming me home. Leafy trees? Wait a second...they all fell off weeks ago! Check it out. The prettiest leaves of the season:












Well, aside from the freakish weather, I only have one week left of the term: Finals week! Luckily I only have one test to worry about. Too bad it's a big one. :( That's ok. It isn't until the very last day of finals week, Sat. 15. It sounds revolting, I know, but I'm actually glad. I have to proctor a final and then grade it and that will consume a lot of the early part of the week. So I have plenty of time left to study, study, study. And besides, I'm not going anywhere. Or am I?

Yes we're leaving town! We're totally excited about our Christmas travel plans this year. We are spending about 9 days in TX for Christmas, and then spending 3 or so days in Colorado for New Years, then it's off to Costa Rica for a week! So it'll be a blast. We get some time alone with the Baillio Grandparents, and we get to meet a new McDonald, and live it up with lots of Barrands. We will soak up the experiences because we won't get another opportunity like it for a while. Not only because it's not every day you go to Costa Rica, but also because I can't take off so much time for Christmas break anymore. Technically I'm overdoing it this season, but that was a major oversight on my part. Grad students are like regular working stiffs, with only 2-3 weeks vacation for a whole year. Silly me. I booked 3 weeks for Christmas alone! I'll make it up somehow.

Well the next two weeks can't come fast enough for us. It's been a long 6 months away from family and loved ones. And we can't wait to show off Brooklyn!

Apple A Day Keeps The Doctor Away

Brooklyn making moves on a neighbor boy

Small Accomplishments

I feel the need to only blog when something important happens. If that were so, there is good reason why we haven't blogged in awhile. So instead let me share some small accomplishments I've achieved over the past two weeks.

I made cinnamon rolls with YEAST! Yeast you say??? Yes, yeast!!!! It's the first time ever I got the yeast to rise. I was very proud and even though Brad only ate one, my friends gobbled them down. And I ate like 6, so I think they turned out.



I painted this for Brooklyn's room. Don't notice that the middle bunny's ears are coming out of the side of it's head.



I made this wreath for only 4 dollars!!! Go festive thrifty me!


I've read a couple more books.






I'm preparing for St. Joesph's High Schools Production of School House Rock Live. I know, I know, I promised myself I would do anymore choreography gigs, but I guess they seemed pretty desperate. And hey who doesn't want "Conjunction Junction" and "Lolly, Lolly, Lolly get your Adverbs Here" in their head all day long?




Also, this isn't a accomplishment, but something I'm REALLY excited about!! We are going to Costa Rica in month!!! Beaches, Seafood, Canopy Tours, Snorkeling,and Monkeys. Brooklyn will be eating alot of sand, but she'll be getting her minerals.



Pictures for fun!

November Lull

So the last few weeks have been mostly uneventful. It's that November lull, when things quiet down right before the storm of the Holiday Season. Now that it is Fall Break at the University, things will start to ramp up in intensity. Thanksgiving is right around the corner, then two weeks of school, final papers, last homework assignments, and then final exams. And I'll be done with another semester. And then begins the craziness of Christmas. So, maybe it's a good thing that we're in a lull. Time to enjoy the relaxation of nothing going on.

A few key occurances in the last few weeks...
Brooklyn upgraded to the bathtub! She loves it so much. :)

Brad got Guitar Hero III, and Super Mario Galaxy.
He loves it so much. :)










Celeste got sick. She hated it so much. :(

Seminary

I once heard this somewhere: "If you want something done, ask a busy man to do it." Well, that's how I feel, because I was already busy, and now I've been asked to teach early morning seminary. And it will definitely get done. I've taught twice already, and it is a great experience. It is fun to be teaching the gospel again, and especially the Old Testament. I think we loose its significance among the "begats" and the cryptic symbolism. Anyways, I am both apprehensive, and psyched for the opportunity. Luckily I am team teaching with another guy in the ward, so we are splitting up the weeks. This takes the stress off.

There are 18 students in the class, which is a lot, but it's no different than my TA class. So I feel pretty comfortable up there teaching. It is great to be studying the scriptures again instead of just reading. Exodus is an amazing book, and an amazing story. I shared with the students on Thursday that the children of Israel were delivered through so many amazing miracles to prove to them, and to the Egyptians, without doubt that they were delivered by the power of God. It is also very significant for us in these days. We know that Moses lived. We know that water turned to blood, fireballs rained from heaven, and the Red Sea parted. These things did in fact occur. And the same God who worked those miracles and cared about the Israelites loves me and you. He cares about us just as much, and is working just as hard to "deliver" us. That is a sobering, and uplifting thought.

Halloween

We had some fun times today celebrating Halloween. The pictures say it all.

http://picasaweb.google.com/brad.baillio/Halloween