A Great Birthday for Great Grandma

Happy Birthday to Great Grandma Della!  We were lucky enough to celebrate the day of her birth on her actual birthday, Sunday, September 25th.  Mom and Dad hosted the party with all of the Mackus side and it was a fun day.  It really felt like Fall with the chill in the air, the fireplace roaring and the football game on TV (Bears vs Packers no less!).

Rewind to Saturday - we had a Great day at Great America with Kristin and Cory.  We went with a private event, so there were really short lines and we hit a ton of great coasters. Literally we walked onto to Superman, did it, then walked around and did it again.  Then we felt sort of sick, not gonna lie.  It was so fun hanging out just the four of us, we had a fabulous time!  Thanks Donna and Emil for watching Luke all day, and for the Chinese food dinner too - yum yum.

Lukers has been babbling a lot more and is altogether the cutest baby ever.  As it has grown a bit colder we tried letting him sleep with a baby blanket in his crib, and he seems to like it.  He keeps it on him for the whole night.  His favorite toy this week is definitely his popper toy.  Here is a video of him playing with it in the driveway and a few cute shots from the week.

Fun with pulling the electric blanket cord

I took Luke to gymnastics last Monday and we had so much fun.

We received the rest of the Shutterwinks pictures and there were some other really cute ones!  I posted some of our favorites here.

A week for some friends

Before I get into the update - take a look at two more "sneak peeks" from our photo shoot last week.  We LOVE them both, aren't they adorable?  Now we really can't wait to see the rest!

It was a nice week in the Baranko routine.  On Wednesday night I had a few of my girlfriends from work over for dinner, including Patrice and little Miss Morgan Frederick - born just 2 days before Luke.  We hadn't seen her since they were only a few weeks old!  Kate and Kristin came over too.  Kristin is due with her little girl in a little less than 2 months, she looks fab.

 

On Saturday we had the pleasure of attending Connie and Sal's wedding in Chicago.  I work with both Connie and Sal at Walgreens, and there were tons of Walgreens friends at the wedding.  It is fun to meet everyone's spouses and relax outside of work.  The wedding was beautiful and there was tons of food!  My first true Italian wedding - 10 courses of amazing food.  Next time remind me to wear my elastic pants to that sort of thing!

Kate and Terry

On Sunday we had grand plans to have a picnic in the gorgeous Chicago Botanic Garden with Kathryn, Madeline, Valerie, Scott, Nathan, Ben and Luis, and had we had the beautiful day that Connie and Sal had the day before it would have been perfect.  Unfortunately the weather didn't cooperate.  We had rain all day, and after a valiant effort of actually meeting at the garden, we had to scrap the idea and go back to our house to have an indoor picnic.  We still had lots of fun catching up with everyone, and the guys liked that they could watch the Bears game instead of walking in gardens.  I still want to get back to the Botanic Gardens though.  I can't believe I've never been there - after almost 10 years of living in Chicago!

Luis and Luke

Madeline

Luke and Nathan

Nothing too special to report on the Luke front.  He said "Ma Ma"  for the first time this week, but it is still said few and far between his other noises.  He also is getting another tooth up on top, so the drooling has no end in sight.  As the weather has gotten a little cooler he has started wearing different clothes and he is really looking like such a toddler.  He even wore big boy 2-piece pajamas.  We got another load of clothes and toys from Nathan and Ben Sosne (thanks guys!) and it has been really fun seeing him grow into all these cute new outfits.  

Line of trucks in their parking lot.

Nice look!

Down on the Farm

Last Saturday we took Lukers to Stade Farm in McHenry, IL.  Aunt Diane & Uncle Garry had invited us to this nearby farm to spend the day enjoying the children's activites and the antique car show.  We're so glad we went!  We had a beautiful, warm day and it was nice to hang out with Diane & Garry, and Donna & Emil.  Luke had his first pony ride in addition to such fun activities as the corn maze, tractor train ride, giant slide, petting zoo and a few other things.

The big news of the day I think has to be that Aunt Diane taught Luke to drink out of a straw!  I had been wondering how one teaches a baby how to suck from a straw,because we had tried a few times and he just wasn't getting it.  When I asked Diane about it she showed Luke how her cheeks sucked in when she drank and after a few times he up and did it himself.   So proud of him! Once he got some of our lemonade with his new straw drinking, he decided he liked that much more than his sippy cup of water.

In the corn pit - he LOVED this.

We couldn't put him down b/c the goats would swarm him!

On the spider web net play area - also a big hit with Luke.

Giant Slide with Daddy

Maze in the old cattle trailers - we did it!

How cute is this?

Corn Maze

 We had to hurry home from the farm to get Luke a nap before his big outdoor 1 year photo shoot.  This is the first time we hired a professional photographer instead of going to a portrait studio.  Shutterwinks Photography (also know as Stephanie Stanger and her assistant for the day, her husband Mark) did an awesome job!  We can't wait to see the rest of the pictures she took.  She let us see a few teasers that got us really excited to see the rest in 2-3 weeks.  Luke did so great, he was smiley for a lot of the shoot.  Steph couldn't get over Luke's big blue eyes.  We think they showed up pretty nicely in the pictures she took.

Sunday we didn't do too much.  It was a nice, sunny day again so we took advantage by spending most of it outside.  It may have been the last pool day we have of the season!  I also got to go on a beautiful bike ride with my friend Katherine.

In Luke development updates, other than the straw news, nothing much to report.  Sleeping is good, eating is good.  He has a few more words like "wa wa" and "ba ba".  Isolene says she has heard him say "ma ma", but I haven't heard it yet.  He officially has a 5th tooth, with the entrance of his bottom right tooth.

Here are a few other cute ones from the week.

Stinkers strikes again!  Unrolling all the TP rolls - new fave activity.

He loves all his new toys, especially his trucks!  He is such a big boy, he  pushes them around the floor and it is so cute.

P.S.  Does anyone watch House Hunters International on HGTV?  We LOVE it!  How am I just getting into this?  Seriously it is my favorite show now, and I can't get enough.  Highly recommend it!