The Baranko Family: Book of Mormon

Another weekend of summertime fun has come and gone! On Saturday Matt and I had a long-awaited date night. For my birthday Matt had given me tickets to Book of Mormon, and the date of the show finally arrived. I can't tell you if I enjoyed the show (which was awesome!) or the gourmet dinner before more. We went to dinner at a restaurant called Henri, and everything was just perfection. The ambiance, the food, the wine, the company - I realized how much I missed that kind of dining experience. It was so wonderful to have alone time with Matt, too. We really should do more date nights:) Sunday we used a Groupon we've had all summer to go to another nearby municipal "waterpark" called Barefoot Bay which turned out to be pretty fun.

Saturday Matt and Luke hit up a neighbor's garage sale and came back with $15 of loot!

Children's camping set, Goodnight moon game, megablocks set, and Little Mermaid lounge chair. Awesomeness.

Claire approves of the chair purchase

Loving the applesauce. You know she likes it when she grabs the spoon from you.

Picnic lunch before the waterpark opened

Barefoot Bay in Mundelein

Luke has started to really overuse the word "Stop". He says it all the time. I think it may be his new favorite word. He says it whenever you try to get him to do something he doesn't want to do. Like if you say, "Luke, time to get dressed" he'll just shout "Stop!". We're trying to teach him the concepts of respect and rudeness, correcting him while still allowing him to express himself. I'm not quite sure if "Please don't do that." is any better than "Stop", but it sounds less disrespectful to my ears even if the intent of the communication is the same. He also is really wanting privacy lately. He'll go in his room and then instruct Matt and I that we need to leave so he can be alone. Just in general he is developing such a little attitude, and not all good. He is also is acting like a teenager in that we often times can't get him up from his nap. He wants to keep sleeping so he won't get out of bed, and he'll tell us to turn the light off and shut the door. One funny story about bedtime is that the other day I had put him down for bedtime, and a little while later he called out that he had to pee. So I went back in there to help him pee, which he did, but not before taking off his pajama pants plus underwear to be able to climb on the big toilet to pee. He ran back into bed when he was done and I tried to get him to put his jammies back on, but he refused. Then I said "At least put your underwear on, even if you don't want your jammy bottoms" and then he said, without missing a beat, "No! I want to sleep with my penis out!". Excuse me???

Claire is exploring new culinary delights with the introduction of pears, sweet potatoes, yogurt and applesauce. She liked everything, but sweet potatoes the least. I really do think she had a sweet tooth! She teased us with a night of sleeping through the night, and it was awesome. It was gone like the wind, though, the next night.

Here are some other pictures from the week as well as a video of Luke & Kirah having a dance party.