A Good Week

This week flew by with some fun events.  Tuesday we had lunch with the Walgreens ladies Kate, Kristin and Patrice.  We finally had an introduction to delightful Ms. Morgan Frederick, born the same week as Luke.  

Patrice with her daughter Morgan and Luke

On Thursday Luke and I headed up to WI for a visit with our Great Aunt Barbara, my mother's aunt, with Kristin, PJ and Mom.  She is such a wonderful lady and so great with the kids.  She has so many similarities to my grandmother, it brought back happy memories of my Grandma and made my heart smile that perhaps my grandmother was looking down on us.

Thursday night we had a fun dinner at Mom and Dad's house.  Luke sat in their high chair for the first time (although he didn't eat anything, he watched us!).  

On Friday, I had a nice visit with Lindsey and Andrea and their children.  Lindsey was in town from MN and has a 2 year old daughter, Silvia, and a 2 month old daughter, Cecilia.  Andrea's daughter Josie was born on 9/1, Cecilia was born on 9/2 and Luke was supposed to have been born on 9/3 to complete the trifecta.  Oh well, 9/4 isn't bad!

Isabelle, Silvie, Lindsey and Cecilia

Josie

Cece

Saturday Kathryn hosted a beautiful baby shower for Luke at her home.  Delicious food, beautiful decorations, fun games, generous gifts and great company for sure!  Thanks Kathryn!

Valerie and her boys Nathan and Ben

Kathryn and TJ

Madeline doing one of the games with TJ

Sunday we went to a baby shower for my cousin Dave and his wife Kristina in Indiana.  Kristin, PJ, Mom, Luke and I drove down together. It was a perfect opportunity for Luke to meet his Kurz side family.  The shower was lovely and our time with our Kurz relatives seemed far too short!

Dave and Kristina

Anne, Tracy, A Penny, me, Lukers

Dana, Lisa, A Barbara

Luke's FIRST Trip!

We have just returned from a fabulous trip to Idaho!  We had a fun-filled visit with Luke's favorite Uncle Ben and Aunt Linda at their beautiful new home in Idaho Falls, ID.  Grandma & Grandpa Baranko joined us for a couple days too, because they just happened to be driving through ID on their way back home to IL from a trip to Washington State.  We were so glad to be able to celebrate Emil's 65th birthday all together, albeit a little belated.

Luke was just a pro on the flights, either sleeping or looking around and smiling at the other passengers.  There was so much to see and do in Idaho, our 4 days there went by too fast!  Ben and Linda were perfect hosts, showing us the sights and feeding us like kings.  Thanks guys!  Loved being out there with you and hope to do it again soon.  Here are a few photos to give you a taste of our trip.

On my first plane trip

Hanging with A Linda and U Ben

Moose sightings at Big Springs in Targhee

At Mesa Falls

Views of the Tetons

B&L's house is surrounded by horse pastures, so they have lots of horse neighbors who like to say hello (and eat the apples from their apple tree)

Baranko boys with their "New Baranko"

Proud Grandpa

Hike in the volcanic fields of "Hell's Half Acre", on the edge of the Craters of the Moon

Ben and Matt drive the MG to the hike

Hike consisted of climbing over volcanic rock

Matt "cruising" around the grounds

Sunset views from their backyard

Birthday Boy with his tractor topped cake

Emil's BD delicious birthday dinner (thanks to Linda!) before our rousing games of Uno

Goodbye!

Ghoulishly Handsome 2 Month Old

Luke is two months old already!  He is definitely sporting the 3-6 month apparel though.  It is so fun - an entirely new wardrobe to dress him up in:)  Luke had a couple notable milestones this week.  The first is that he is able to sit in his little Bumbo chair and hold himself up for a little while, until he gets tired and kind of falls over.  He really enjoys being in it though, so we've been putting him in it a little more everyday.  The second milestone is that Luke slept in his crib in his own room for the very first time on Saturday night.  He has been sleeping in the bassinet next to our bed for the past two months, but since he was 8 weeks old on Saturday we decided to introduce the crib.  He did great!  He slept his normal amount (3.5 hours, then 2 hours, then 1 hour) and we were able to use our fancy new video monitor to make sure all was well.

Activities of the week:

- On Tuesday Donna came up for a fun shopping outing to Historic Long Grove.  We went to almost all of the adorable shops in that cute town, had lunch and got a good start on our Christmas shopping (at least I did!).

- Saturday we went downtown to visit our friends Kathryn and Madeline.  We had a great time catching up and enjoying the lovely fall weather on their friend's front porch.  

Kathryn and Luke, sporting his pumpkin hat and booties (thanks Cise's!)

- Saturday night we carved pumpkins, just in time for Halloween.  Luke didn't really pull his weight, but seemed to enjoy watching the action.  I did a pretty standard face, but Matt did a really cool Halloween penguin.  Those flightless birds really like to get into All Hallow's Eve you know.

- Sunday was Halloween.  I had done a little photo shoot with Luke in his festive Halloween sleeper, but on the actual day Luke decided to dress up as a cow.  He was pretty darn cute.  
I had swim practice in the afternoon, but Matt was all set with tons of candy, ready for our first suburban trick or treating extravaganza (we were out of town last year).  Then we ended up having only 4 kids come!  Apparently we're off the beaten path of those candy hungry kiddos.  More for us, I guess!

- Lastly, Monday Luke had his 2 month doctor appointment.  He's growing up so fast.  Here are the updated stats:

Weight: 13 lbs, 2.5 ozs - 90th percentile!!!!
Length: 23 inches - 50th percentile
Head: 40.5 cms - between 50-75th percentile

For those of you who heard about our issues with thrush a couple weeks ago, I'm sorry to say that it is back!  Noooo, say it isn't so!  So we're doing another round of treatment.  Needless to say I'm not pysched about once again having to boil everything that comes into contact with my milk or his mouth.  Ugh.  Fingers crossed that we beat this nuisance for good this time.  Other than that, he is a healthy kid!

Checking out my wrist rattle, thanks Jenae and Jeremy!

Working on our scrapbook and enjoying our first cozy fire of the season.