Meeting my nephew!

I spent four days in Arizona getting to know sweet baby Sebastian:) What a sweetie pie!  I loved getting the time with Sebby, not to mention PJ, Kristin, Cory, Katie, Joe & Isabelle!

Lunch with K&S

First time holding him

the man already is a fan of desserts

Trying out the baby carrier

wildlife sighting!

Family I found at the end of the rainbow

Sky looked so gorgeous

silly girl

Isabelle is SO grown up since last time I saw her  in January!

Katie & Joe's views are beautiful

Yummy Italian dinner out with Katie, Kristin and their friend Ellen.

Katie & Joe hosted us for a delicious brunch, which was a great chance to see Sue, too!

I got a chance to meet Kristina, who I've heard solo much about.  She's a hoot!

Sunsetting my time in AZ, until next time!

Beach Bums

We had a nice little week of enjoying some summertime downtime!

In Luke news, he is really getting good at sounding out words.  If you tell him a word he can almost always sound out what the first letter is, and sometimes can identify other letters in the word, too.  It is really impressive!  I feel like he'll be ready to read and spell in short order, he has shown such an interest in all of this already.  He also is curious about everything.  We have officially entered into the fabled "But why?" phase of his childhood.  Like he asked, "What's a nostril?", "What's a date?"  Or more often he phrases it as "But, how do you know?"  I just know, my son, I just know.  

First mini golf experience with Luke - he was hooked!

The keeping score and playing for real part was not really happening.  He loved the holes where there were secret passages that the balls would go through and come out the other end somewhere down below.

Hit the Farmer's Market again briefly on Saturday (primarily for Luke to get ANOTHER blubbery muffin from the same 12 year old kid selling them for $1 a piece)

We hit the beach with Matt's former work friend Jon and his wife Jenny and son Cameron, who is just a little younger than Claire.

Saturday night we went to neighbor Steve & Caroline's for dinner.  Other neighbor Jack and Claire have a little connection going:)  He took her for a spin in his police car. 

Yogurt much?

We found out Sat night that our neighbor friends had both NEVER been to Open Lands, can you believe it?  We remedied that as quickly as possible by leading a Sunday morning hike.

Luke loved showing him all of the sights!

Baby Sebastian home!

Went to the Botanic Garden for the annual kite show, and Claire met this little bird decoration, too.

Hugs!

Luke BEGGED to go back the mini golf place, even with Claire in tow.  

That's all folks!

Sebastian Jay Carpenter

Welcome, welcome, welcome to the world to our new nephew Sebastian Jay Carpenter!!  You are our miracle baby, and we couldn't be happier to have you join our family!!

Congratulations to Kristin, Cory and big sister Paige!

Born:  August 6, 2014 at 11:10am, 9 lbs. 2 oz, 20.5"

Matt's 1st 5K Race

Matt completed his first official 5K last week, successfully finishing the Lake Forest Day 5K with Luke in the jogging stroller no less!  Matt has taken up running in the past couple years, and has been consistently running 5K or more for his regular work outs, but this was his first official race.  I thought it was so sweet that he wanted to share this occasion with Lukers!  He thought Luke would want to ride his bike for a while before getting into the stroller, but Luke opted to stay in the stroller the entire time, which meant that Matt got to push the stroller, Luke and the balance bike the whole time!  Great job, Matt!

In other exciting Matt news, he sold the investment property down the street from our house!  This was another successful flip for him, which is awesome, although I think we'll all kind of miss not "owning" the little house down the street.  It was kind of fun stopping in there every time we went for a walk around the block.  But we're so happy that the deal is going through and he'll be on to his next investment in no time.

This week we also had a bit of a Baranko family reunion.  With Emil's brother George and his family in town from Washington DC, his other local siblings all came over for dinner.  It was great to see everyone!

All the Baranko kids except for Aunt Bertha

Other pics from the week:)

Claire taking a selfie

Ice cream date with Katherine, Eliah and little Lily

At the Farmer's Market on Saturday

Luke is borderline addicted to the blueberry muffins at a local stand 

We decided to take some breakfast out on the boat on Sunday morning to enjoy the calm waters and blue skies.  It was so fun!

"Fishing" off the back.  Claire is such a little girl now instead of a baby!  She can really participate in so many things.

At the Lake Forest Day carnival - one excited kid

I won't forget being in line for this ride with Luke and him being BEYOND EXCITED to ride Dumbo.  His eyes were so bright and his smile was so big with happiness and anticipation, I wish I could have bottled it.  There was a helicopter, a car, etc.  and he could not contain his pure joy of getting to ride Dumbo (one of his favorites).  He couldn't hold himself back from telling the bigger kids in front of him in line about how HE was going to ride Dumbo.  The other big boys had been talking about how thy were going to ride the race car and helicopter and how those were so cool, and I held my breath for Luke's sake, hoping they wouldn't squash his sweet innocence by telling him something about how Dumbo was for babies.  I was so relieved when they were sweet kids and humored him, nodding at his Dumbo proclamation.  Dodged it this time, but it gave me a glimpse into the future - how I'll be helpless to keep him from getting his feelings hurt by others and the sure knowledge that someday he'll lose that precious innocence (lump in throat as I write this).  Until then, enjoy that Dumbo ride my sweet boy!