The Baranko Family: Steamrolled

This week has been cracker jack full of activities.

Claire had her ballet recital on Wed, with Daddy, Grandma & Grandpa Baranko, Isolene and I attending (Luke was in school). It was just like a regular class, but they called it a recital. Matt accompanied Claire for most of it which she was thrilled by, with Grandma Baranko finishing it off with her. There's an adorable little video in there you won't want to miss.

Then Luke has his preschool holiday program this week, too. More cuteness! In November we received Luke's line for the holiday program - each student had one line to memorize. He was adamantly opposed to reciting his line "variety adds to life", although we knew he knew it. Matt and I would randomly say the line in conversation or sporadically out of nowhere, and he would always recognize it and tell us not to say it. Leading up to the big day his teachers had made other arrangements for him since he was so against getting up on the stage and doing the holiday program and they did not want to force him. Luke was going to hand out the programs instead:) Knowing how Luke is so sensitive about having attention on him and gets so upset usually, we weren't really surprised about this. But we were surprised and proud when we got to the program that day and learned that Luke had come to the decision on his own that he DID want to participate in the program. And he did awesome! He said his line into the microphone and sang the songs the class had prepared, complete with accompanying hand and body movements. He didn't even get upset with the group singing and clapping. It really showed us how much Luke has matured since last year. He's even wearing "handsome clothes" that he picked out!

Saturday night Matt and I went to the Mannheim Steamroller concert, which Matt affectionately dubbed "getting steamrolled" which I thought was hilarious. The concert was great! I love the music, but have to admit that the accompanying video clips could use some updating. The highlight has to have been the one with the animated steamroller entering into a live action sock hop and sweeping a real girl off her feet before going home with her (yes the cartoon character steamroller got the girl). We went to dinner at yummy Gibson's beforehand with my friend Hannah which was a great way to start the night off.

Isolene took off for the holidays, so Matt was on Daddy duty full time for several weekdays while I worked. He is so amazing that this didn't phase him at all. They kept really busy with the library and things like that, and the kids even went with him to visit houses he is currently renovating to check on them. Donna and Emil also pitched in when he had meetings. Anyway, on one of these Daddy days he brought them to my work to have lunch with me in my cafeteria which was really fun.

Skipping and doing twinkle toes

Push ups become more challenging when the kids decide it's a good time to "hop on pop"

Luke still retained his program distributor job, too, the only kid to do that!

He took it very seriously, and was really cute about it.

One of Luke's teachers, Ms. Dunkleman, introducing the program

Fishy song

Blue Class, Kinderhaven Academy

Party with snacks in the classroom after the show

The Elf on the Shelf had lots of fun spots to observe the children this year, like this one pictured

Love our tree this year - stills smells great and gives me happy feelings every time I catch a whiff or get a glimpse of its twinkling lights

Triple decker bridge, very impressive

Our holiday dinner with the Hartman's. Eloise is wearing her new jammies from St. Nick.

Teaching Luke to play Uno, he really got the hang of it and actually legitimately won. He has a FIERCE competitive streak and gets pretty upset when he doesn't win. He told us that if you win, you can just say that you "Luke". So apparently now the word win and Luke are synonyms. This could get interesting.

My little Christmas wrapping helper

Claire wasn't quite as helpful. She just wanted to sit on all of the wrapped gifts, try to open them and eat snacks. She also specialized in ripping bows off of all the finished gifts.