Everybody Say "Cheese"!

So we've been back for a week now, and the whole car situation is getting closer to a resolution. We're waiting on a guy to get back in town so we can finish checking out his Hyundai Elantra. It looks like an ok deal. 2000, 46k miles. $4300. It's either that or a 2000 VW Passat, 151k miles, $4850. I actually want the Passat for some crazy reason, but Celeste (and everybody else I talk to) tells me the Elantra is the way to go. So we'll see how that pans out.


For the weekend, we went with our good friends, the Thorpes, to the Arthur Cheese Festival! It was a good way to kill the Saturday. We entered Brooklyn into a Cheese Eating Contest for youth 12 and under. Sadly, she didn't win. :( However, she did get a free T-shirt as a consolation prize. I also entered a cheese eating contest, but didn't win either. I was more in it for the culinary delight of eating cheese for a pastime. After the cheese eating contests, we entered a Cheese Curling Contest. This was a much tougher competition. Matt Thorpe was our "sweeper". Celeste, April and I all rolled our 10 lb. Baby Swiss Cheese Wheel down the course, and Matt tried to guide it into the target. Unfortunately, we didn't fare very well in this event either. But no matter. In all the competitions, we got to keep the cheese! So we came home with about 6 lbs. of cheese! We celebrated our cheesy heaven by eating fondue at the Thorpe's house that evening.

It was a marvelous way to spend a Saturday! And the weekend is still not over, thanks to Labor Day! We'll see what other mischief we can get into on Monday...

The Nitty Gritty

So, now that we are safe and sound in our home in Illinois, we can share our last grand adventure from our Boston days.


The last week was spent at a friend's house. Celeste babysat their 2 girls along with Brooklyn. When I got home the first day, she looked exhausted and irritated and said to me, "Let's go home tonight." Needless to say, going from 1 little child to 3 in a day wasn't the easiest transition. But the following few days went by without a hitch, and we got all set to head home.

Celeste picks me up from work on Friday, my last day at Kiva (which was a great last day!), and on the way home she suggests we leave that evening to start our treck home, instead of Saturday morning. "We'll get there earlier, and can go to church on Sunday and see our friends. Plus Brooklyn will sleep through an entire leg of the trip." Ok, I said. That sounds like a good idea.

So we packed everything into the car and headed out Friday night. We wanted to see Niagara Falls on our way out, so we drove into a rinky-dink motel in Niagara at 1:30 am to settle for the night. As we pull into our room, there are about 8 miscreants drinking booze and looking real scary sitting around outside the room next-door. I was a little worried about our stuff, but too tired to give it much thought.


The next morning we got up early (thanks to Brooklyn) and got ready for a long trip home, but first an amazing view of the Niagara Falls. It was a really gorgeous view and pretty fun to see. I thought it was going to be much taller than it was, but the volume of water cascading down was impressive. After seeing the falls we happily started our 10 hour journey home. Little did we know then, what a journey it would become!

After only about an hour, maybe hour and a half, the air conditioning started blinking, and it came out warm. I thought that was odd, so I turned it off temporarily. The rear-view mirror was getting all fogged up. I thought that was weird and couldn't explain how it happened. Then the cruise control turned off, and we started slowing down. I tapped the brakes a little and hit the gas. We revved but no tension. The transmission was acting up. Then the check engine light came on. I attempted to brake down to a lower gear and try again, but to no avail. Then all the lights possible on the dash lit up, the car turned off and we coasted with the hazard lights on to the side of the road. What just happened! I saw the temperature gauge, and it was as hot as can be. Oh. I hope we're just overheated. We'll wait for a while, let it cool down, pour some water into the reserve tank, and hopefully be on our way.

So here we are, eating lunch on a little blanket on the side of the road, in the middle of no-where, praying that the car is just overheated.


About an hour later, we called 911 to get a tow-truck to pick us up. The car did indeed cool down, but that didn't fix the problem. When the tow-truck guy got there, he looked at it and said the timing belt was thrown. So that's why it isn't starting. He also thought something like the water pump probably broke and that's what threw the belt. He called a few garages in the nearest town, but no one wanted to work on Saturday. Even if they did, they certainly didn't want to work on a timing belt. That's serious stuff. So he started taking us to his shop in Ripley, PA. Well, we weren't sure we wanted to wait until Monday to get things fixed, so he called up Firestone in Erie, PA. They said they would look at it! Hurray! Well, Erie, PA was about 40 miles away. That turned out to be a $275 tow. Yikes!

So it's now about 1:30 pm or so, and Firestone gets the car and for $99 will do a 2-hour inspection to see what's wrong. They tell us we better hope it isn't the timing belt, because when that goes, it usually does major damage to other things. Luckily, the Firestone was located in a Mall Center. So we got some real lunch in the food court, and went to a pet shop and looked at clothes. It was rather relaxing given the stressful turn of events of the day. About an hour later, Firestone calls us back. They said we were lucky, because it was just the water pump and timing belt. Just like the tow-truck guy said! Yeah! But, to fix both things was $800. What! Celeste pushed them down to $700 and we said, OK. Fix it up and we can continue our trek home. To kill time, we saw Iron Man at the dollar theater nearby. It was fun to see the movie, and it certainly killed the time and made us forget our miserable day. At least at 6:30, we would be on the road, and that much closer to home.


We returned at 6:30 and they tell us they made a mistake. There's more damage to the car than they thought. It seems the internals of the engine are messed up. That's a 9-hour inspection, which would cost $500. And if something IS wrong in there, it'll be $1500 and a week to get the parts fixed! You. Have. Got. To. Be. Kidding. Well, we had to start talking options, and Firestone was closing. We needed a hotel room. I must be grateful for the kindness of our Firestone guy, Joe. He was so nice and helpful during the entire ordeal. He offered to drive us to a hotel. We checked some hotels nearby the Mall, but everything was booked solid. One of the hotels told us about a hotel downtown that had availability. So we went there and got settled for the night. A wedding party canceled, so there were available rooms, and they were discounted from the regular $120/night. Only $99/night. We reserved a room for 2 nights, just in case.

The hotel was a godsend after an awful day. It was large, they had a pack-n-play for Brooklyn. They had free internet access. And a King sized bed. It was heaven in the midst of our personal hell. We went through our limited options, and decided to rent a car one-way and just finish the drive on Sunday. An 8-9 hour trip, and we'd finally be home, where we have friends, and connections and resources. So I reserved a car for $200 that night. Since the rental place was at the airport, the hotel called us a cab, and paid for it. That was another great thing about the hotel. (Plus it made Celeste feel better, like we really only paid $80 for the night).


Sunday was as you would expect. We picked up the rental, drove to Firestone, transferred our things to the rental, said goodbye to our Camry, and hit the road. Firestone was very generous and only charged us the initial $99 inspection fee. Our drive home was uneventful, and very normal. Just how it should have been. Celeste pulled the last leg from Indianapolis to Champaign. We were all weary of being in the car, and especially so close to home. But Brooklyn felt it the worst, I'm afraid. Celeste shed tears of joy, relief and frustration as we pulled into Winfield Village. We were all so exhausted from the horrific weekend, but all so glad to be home.

The worst part of the tale is that we just had $450 worth of car repair done to the Camry in July. So when we finally got home, we returned $1200 poorer, and missing our only car. So our next big adventure is buying another car.

I have to put at the end of this tragic story, how grateful we are that we are alive and well. So many things could have gone much worse. We are grateful that we are back home, that we had money in savings to absorb this impact, and that we have friends and family who are loving and supportive. And some day, we'll see what God intended us to learn, and how we were to grow through this whole thing.

Are we there yet?

We'll update you all about our final week in Boston and the trip home as soon as we get home. It might take us a little longer than planned however...

Barrand Grandparents

So first things first. Everyone is clambering for details on the pregnancy, so I'll give 'em to you. Now when people said details, I figured the mechanics of the thing were pretty familiar with most, so we'll skip that part. Celeste is about 7 weeks pregnant and should be due April 6th or so. I say "about" and "should be" because we've been a little confused by it all. Let me explain...

Celeste thought she might be pregnant about a month ago so she bought a 3-pack pregnancy test. She took one that night and it came up negative. A few weeks went by and when she was late, she took another one. In despair, she tossed it away. Another negative. Finally, this past week she started feeling a bit queasy and wonky, just like she did with Brooklyn. So she took the final test and again, negative. Confusing but sad. She really wanted to get pregnant soon. Later that same day, when I got home from work, we were browsing the blogosphere, and we happened upon the Nye's blog. And we found out that Julie was pregnant! And topping off the blog post was a picture of the positive test results. Celeste says to me, "Wait a minute. Two bars means you're pregnant?" So she runs to the trash, finds that morning's test, re-reads the instructions, and sure enough, she was pregnant. Turns out, Celeste had been looking for a plus sign the whole time, but they weren't plus sign tests.

So there you go. Exciting news! And on top of that doosy, we had Celeste's parents here for the weekend! So it was a great time all around.

Celeste took them to Concord on Friday morning, which they all loved. It's such a fun place. Celeste's Dad commented that the fascination lies in being able to connect a monumental, cataclysmic change in world history with a physical place. Indeed! In the evening when I joined the group, we ate out at Gregory's House of Pizza. It is this delicious pizza place close to the house. We have gone there almost every Friday since being here in Boston. It is really tasty and reasonably priced. To commemorate our devotion to the place, I bought a T-shirt!

Saturday was filled with Boston tours, by foot. Grandma and Grandpa went off in the morning to catch the Freedom Trail while we stayed home and Brooklyn napped. Then we joined them downtown at Fenuil Hall for some delicious food and a tour of the North End. It was really great. The food was superb, and the North End was interesting. It is practically Boston's Little Italy, it is home to the Old North Church and Paul Revere's House. The church steeple housed the lanterns that signaled "one if by land, two if by sea".


This officially concludes our Bostonian adventures....for now. We've only got one week left here and then we're driving back to Illinois to start my final semester of school! It's been a fantastic summer. Celeste and I commented how this ranks the third best summer since we've known each other. Let's have a Huzzah for Boston on the count of three.
One.
Two.
Three.

HUZZAH!

Could it be?

You say you want a revolution???

This week I read Breaking Dawn- It was a good finish to the series. But two things really bothered me. 1.The name Renesmme! Ugggh! 2. What Jacob got stuck with for life.


We went to the Museum of Fine Arts and these were my favorites....

Renoir


Monet


Van Gogh


Brad and I went the a Major League Soccer Game. I actually enjoyed it! Me, who is sooo cultured! The Boston Revolution was playing against the Chicago Fire. Boston lost, so we claimed the Fire (being from Illinois),and everything was happy.



I putting up this video from last week, cause some may have missed it. And I think it's too funny to be missed. Besides its my blog and I can do whatever I want.

Baillio Grandparents

So Grandma and Grandpa came to visit for about a week. It was an interrupted week though. They came on a Tuesday, left on Thursday, came back on Saturday, and left again on Tuesday. We did so much fun stuff while they were here. It was precisely the kind of week reserved for Grandparents.

We ate out several times, including more seafood! Celeste and I went to 2 movies. Grandma and Grandpa babysat while we saw "Get Smart" one night, and "The Dark Knight" another. Both were good movies. "Dark Knight" was a bit dark/depressing, but it was good. I still think that "Batman Begins" is my favorite Batman of all. As a group, we hit the town on Sunday to see a little bit of Boston. We saw Harvard Campus and took the ferry ride around the north end. It was a fun Bostonian day. We also headed out to Old Sturbridge Village on Monday. It's like visiting Nauvoo, only better. It's another "live museum" where people dress up 1800s and play the parts of people from the time. My favorite parts were the 19th century school lesson, and the "Punch and Judy" show. They were both so interesting and fun to experience.

Well, I'll be short(er?) on words this week, and fill in the details with some pictures.

Celeste's Birthday

8 weeks have come and gone here in Boston. This weekend really sank home with me. We got out on Fri, and Sat and did so many interesting and fun things. It hit me that Boston is one sweet city. I think it is by far the coolest "big" city I've ever been too.

When we first arrived, it was hard to see past the disastrous roads, and the crazy drivers. But after adjusting and then experiencing Boston, you see what a beautiful place it is. New York is busy, angry and dirty. LA is over-crowded, dangerous, and polluted. Chicago is nice in certain areas, and scary in others. Madrid comes close to competing with Boston, but it's in Europe. Boston is family-friendly, American, historic, and simply charming. I really like this place. Too bad it sits under snow for 8 months out of the year...

To kick things off, we did a Boston by Foot tour. Celeste did one Friday morning of the Victorian Back Bay. If you go and look at a map of Boston from the Revolution, you'll see that it was a little peninsula/island city. They chopped up the hills to fill in some areas to create more real estate. For the Back Bay area, they hauled in train loads of dirt and gravel for many years just to create a pretty, picturesque neighborhood. And so they did. And so it is.

In the evening, we did the Beacon Hill tour, which is where the State Courthouse is. It was the seat of the Federalist style architecture. There were some really amazing neighborhoods in that area. It was peaceful and quiet and charming, and only costs a cool 2 million to live there. It was a great tour nonetheless.

Saturday we visited Walden Pond since we missed it last week. We only spent a little while there just enjoying the water and beach. It was very picturesque. Then we went back to the Minute Men Visitor's Center to catch a flick about the "Road to Revolution". It documented the fighting that occurred in that first eventful battle along the road from Boston to Concord. It was a very well done presentation that informed us without draining the life from us. Afterward Celeste puzzled why History Teachers are so boring in their history presentation. It's all overheads and note taking. No flash. No pizazz. Just boredom. Something needs to change there, because history is a sensational subject!

For the evening, and to celebrate Celeste's 29th birthday, we shut Brooklyn in the closet with a sippie cup and binkie, and painted the town red! Just kidding. We were good parents, and got a babysitter. But we still painted the town. We had a delicious meal at Legal Sea Restaurant right on the wharf in downtown Boston. It's reported the best seafood joint in town. I'll give my thumbs up. I typically have to force my seafood down with a healthy portion of liquid. Not this time! I had the rainbow trout in butter chive sauce and it was really good! Celeste had an equally delicious Wild Salmon dish with a skewer of shrimp. Besides the food, the restaurant scored high marks for two other reasons. First, despite the 45 minute wait, we took a small table right in the entrance right away since it was designated similar to the oyster bar. Secondly, they brought a credit card swiper machine right to the table, and (here's the clentcher) they had 4 available options to enter the tip amount. The 15%, 18%, and 20% tip was already calculated for you. Just a push of a button. Also if you wanted to enter your own amount, you could do that too. I thought it was genius. I loved it. So Celeste won a victory last night because I'm a little closer to the seafood loving style of life.

To wrap up the evening, we saw Shakespeare in the Park. It was down in Boston Common, and they performed 'As You Like It'. The set was cool, and they set it in the 1940s Germany, which was interesting. The acting was neither here nor there. Some people we liked, others we didn't. We felt they could have cut some of the rather obtuse scenes from the play, but overall it was fun. There's nothing like Shakespeare to end a wonderful birthday bash!

Warning: American History Ahead

This weekend's adventure was wholly patriotic. We started with swimming with some frogs!
Ok. Maybe that bit wasn't patriotic, but on we went to Concord to see where 'America' started.
We began our walk through time with a minuteman carrying his customary gun and a plow. Those brave men had to be ready at any minute to drop their field work and join the fight for freedom.
This is the Old North Bridge where colonists fired the first shots at British soldiers. It was of this place that Emerson wrote the Hymn, "...Here once the embattled farmer stood, and fired the shot heard round the world."
Next we visited the Old Manse. It is a stone's throw from the Old North Bridge. This place was amazing. It is by far my favorite stop in Boston. William Emerson was a Patriot minister and fought at the Bridge. His wife watched the whole battle from the study window. Emerson survived the battle and continued to act as a minister for the Patriot Army. His grandson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, penned his famous essay 'Nature' while living in this house. Emerson died and his wife later remarried another minister, Ripley. The Ripley's rented the Old Manse out to the Hawthorne's for their honeymoon. They ended up staying for three years. They were terrible renters. Never paid rent. She painted their bedroom metallic gold. She scrawled various things on the windows using her diamond ring. Needless to say, the Ripley's were upset after 3 years went by. However, Hawthorne wrote a lot of things while staying in the house, and coined the title Old Manse. When Hawthorne came back later in life to Concord, he sqaured his debt and became good friends with the Ripleys.

Anyways, I could go on with all the rich history of this place. That's why I liked it so much. It was just an ordinary house, next to an ordinary bridge, but so much interesting history happened there.
We visited the Orchard House, where Little Women was written. It was interesting too, but I've never read much or heard much about the Alcotts and the book, so it wasn't as interesting to me. Celeste really enjoyed it though. There were several successful writers who lived here in Concord. Mr. Alcott was good friends with Thoreau and Emerson. His daughter writes one of the most famous novels, and Hawthorne lived down the street. Interesting stuff.

Last of all, we went to the beach (again, not so patriotic) to see some sand 'castles'. They had this big sand sculpture festival, so we went to see the entries. Needless to say, they were amazing. Enjoy the pics!

(This was my favorite!)

Winning,Wingaersheek, Wounds, and Whales

This weeks highlights.............

Brooklyn astride the Tortoise, as it wins the race to the Hare.



Building sandcastles and digging holes on Wingaersheek beach.





Brad went paintballing. There was a considerable amount of running, crouching, and hiding.



Therefore, he received some horrific wounds. (As you see in his cry of agony.)



While Brad was expressing his instinctual man-hunt side, Celeste went Whale Watching. She cried, it was so wonderful!!! Brooklyn cried also, but because she wanted to run up and down the dangerous boat stairs, and mom wouldn't let her.

Here is a video of a whale lob-tailing, apparently it's very rare. The guide said he was just playing around trying to get attention. (Ignore the first 20 secs.)

A little time on the side.......

Okey Dokey time for another book review.. Celeste style....non-detailed, non-literary, non-intelligent, but highly recommend. Or so people lie to me......

***Get It Today!!!
** Pretty Darn Good
* Skip it

**(*) The Host: Ahhhh Stephanie Meyer, I wanted to love this book so much because, you wrote it, and ....... I did!!!. Had some flaws, but I'm a sci-fi girl at heart, so naturally I devoured it. Who cares if all those love sappy girls were disappointed there was no Edward, who cares- you gave me something better- mind controlling aliens!!! I knew that if only we knew each other at BYU, we could have been best friends watching Star Trek together!! I even recommend this book to Brad- and I hardly EVER do that. I have a theory... Brad only likes book with a male protagonist written by a male, and has a flying mythical creature in it. But, I think he would like this one. (nows he's going to write a post defending himself.)


**Uglies, Pretties, Specials by Scott Westerfield- A Young Adult Trilogy. A not too distant future where it is required to get surgery at 16 years old to make you supermodel beautiful. Fun concept, lots of hoverboard action. Wasn't crazy about the 3rd book though.




***Invasive Procedures- Orson Scott Card. If you like Dan Brown books ("DaVinci Code/Angels and Demons"), you'll love this book. A religious cult is performing surgeries to heal genetic diseases, while releasing a horrible virus. Page turning action with great dialogue.


***A War of Gifts- Short story to add on to the Ender's Game Saga. Must read for those Ender Fans. If you haven't read "Ender's Game"- What's the matter with you??





*The Lightning Thief- Juv. Fiction. Disappointing, boring, predictable. To many parallels to Harry Potter and his crew.






*** The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing- African American is brought up as part of a science experiment in the years leading up to and during the Revolutionary War. A must for historical fiction lovers.





***(*) The Book Thief- I'm adding a extra star, because it deserves it. This is the book you should read.
A young girls life during the events of World War Two. Wonderfully written. Cried laughed, threw the book across the room. Comparable to "Thousand Spelindid Suns/Kite Runner".





*** I Am The Messenger- same author as "Book Thief". A cab-driver begins recieving mysterious messages that direct him to addresses where people need help. So hard to put down. Again cried, laughed, no throwing this time, but my heart melted a few times.



So there you go. Happy Reading!
And always interested in what you are reading!!