Happy Thanksgiving!

I left my camera at the cabin today so we'll be going without most pictures today. Whoops! You'll get to see them all next week :)

On Saturday I headed over to G.G.'s house for a fun time of baking. Missy (Guy's cousin) was the one who organized the whole thing and it was so much fun. We watched White Christmas and made rice krispie treats, pumpkin bread, and then I brought stuff to make a gluten free cranberry orange shortbread bar. It was very good! And Guy attests that the rice krispie treats were good. We also had baked potatoes with a bunch of toppings for dinner. What a fun time!

On Sunday we had our last Bible Study meeting for the year. It was a potluck. We brought a holiday salad and some candied walnuts and clementines. It was a lot of fun and we tried Choffy for the very first time. Choffy is ground cocoa beans brewed just like coffee. It was very tasty. Guy still prefers coffee :) To me it tasted like hot chocolate! No flavors or sweeteners added but it was still very good.

Nico played games with his friends and our friends let us take home one of their board games because Nico loved it and wanted to borrow it. And speaking of board games.. we are playing them like crazy over here. Nico even beat me at a game of Settlers of Catan the other day. He doesn't understand yet a lot of the strategy behind games, but he understands the rules and the processes and he is very very good even without strategy yet.

Nico has had this whole week off because of Thanksgiving. We've done a lot of relaxing and hanging out. On Wednesday we heard that there was snow accumulating at the cabin, so Guy asked that we sit down and pray that we would still be able to go to Thanksgiving. He had been looking forward to going and I'll tell you what.. when he asks to pray about something, it's SERIOUS business! 

And good news, we made it up there today! Chains required. And Guy was overjoyed. He enjoyed himself so much he almost burst at the seems several times during the day. He was giddy. There were several reasons why... being at the cabin, him not being tired, getting to spend time with just us (me, Guy and Nico) with just Ma and Pa (we went up early), and last but not least.. the MST3K Turkey Day marathon. We got up there early so we could make stuffing. That was fun. Guy helped chop onions and wore a cheetah print apron. Nico and Papa played board games. I took some pictures (to come next week) and then Jonny and Alanna, Alanna's mom Wanda, and Lexie came. Thanksgiving dinner was so yummy, there were lots of good food and everyone loved the stuffing. I gave the recipe to Wanda.

We celebrated Christmas, sang songs, had the lego challenge, won prizes, the kids (Lexie and Nico) had a treasure hunt and it was generally just a great relaxed time. Guy being able to spend that much awake time with family was very nice for him and for us. I look forward to being able to do more of these kinds of family things with an awake Guy in the future. Looking forward to the Grandparents Russell visit in December!

Thanks to Grandparents Salisbury for the wonderful Thanksgiving and all the yummy leftovers!!

Guy has tomorrow off and it will be a wonderful weekend. Be prepared for picture overload next week, plus our yearly Winter Garden Aglow picture (which we will get done this Saturday)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Board games, Book fair, first snow

The main house was empty this past weekend, as Jeff & Allicia and crew had gone out of town for a few days. On Saturday I headed up to the cabin again while the boys stayed home. I had a great time, and so did the boys!

Nico has been enjoying playing board games lately, so we have been playing a lot of Forbidden Island and Creationary. Guy and Nico do that together a lot, too. For "You and Me Time" Nico usually picks playing with cars, or aliens/Batman (toy figurines), because those are the thing that I usually wouldn't play with him at any other time. You and Me Time is special because he gets to choose what we do. hehe... Guy seems to favor playing games over playing cars and batman, too.

On Monday night, Guy and I played Forbidden Island with Jeff & Allicia. That is probably the 3rd "date night" we've all had together after the kids have gone to bed. You'd think for how long we've been living here (more than a year now!) we would have found more time than just 3 evenings to hang out and play board games. We're going to try to do that more often.

Tuesday morning we took another loop around the greenbelt. Before we even got started, Nico bumped his Strider bike into Evelyn's bike and Evelyn turned around and said: "Nico, if you do that again, then I am not going on this bike ride." After we were about 200 yards from the house, Nico bumped into the back of her again and Evelyn turned around and rode home. Nico came up to me and told me he wanted Evelyn to be there, so we went back to the house so Nico could apologize and ask Evelyn to join us. Nico told me it was an accident that he did it, so I told him to tell her that. But, Evelyn still did not want to come back. So, Evelyn stayed home.

Wednesday Nico came home with a Book Fair wishlist. Him and his two "study buddies" (from higher grades, not sure which), went to the book fair and Nico picked out 3 books he wanted and they wrote them down for him. I had already decided I was going to buy him 1 book, so today we left early for school and stopped in at the Book Fair. Nico's choices were all thick books about legos and star wars and ninjas, each with their own lego figurine. He chose the Ninja one.

A peak at the content

First snow happened this week! Not much, but, it was something.

Nico asks me every morning if it's going to be cold that day so that he knows what kind of clothes to wear. I always say "Yes" and he's started getting frustrated about it. I told him it's going to be cold for a long time and will probably get even colder than it is now!

We booked a cottage rental on the beach on Camano Island for our trip to Arlington next March. Take a look! https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/8488890

It's "cozy" but we are used to that! :) I am excited about Nico getting to be on the beach!

VIDEO!

G.G., The Loop

On Saturday Guy thought he was going to have to work but they gave him the day off because he was going to start the M-F schedule the next week. It was fun to spend the morning with him! Then Nico and I left to go to the Sensory Friendly movie, we met some of Nico's friends there (and my friend, the mom) from church. Lazarus, Leona (Nico calls her Lenoa) and Matthias, the mom is Elizabeth. The movie was Minions. Very cute! Afterward we came home and spent a pleasant afternoon/evening together. Guy had organized some of the clubhouse and it was great to see it looking a little less cluttered.

On Monday we took "the loop", which is our name for a loop on the greenbelt that takes us about 45 minutes. In the summer this loop is not practical because it is exposed and way too hot in the afternoons. But it is perfect in the fall and winter. If the sun is out it warms us up.

Avery

Allicia, Ivy, and Evelyn behind

Nico and Evelyn watching kids play on the Adam's school playground. When asked if it looked like fun to Evelyn (looking ahead to her kindergarten days next year) she said "No!" She seemed a little intimidated by all the noise.

Nico and Evelyn spend a lot of time arguing over who gets to be in the front. We're trying to work on all their conflict, they are like siblings sometimes. In fact, Nico calls Evelyn his sister sometimes, but also mentions on occasion that he is going to marry her.

They got so far ahead of us that they got to the crosswalk with the button you push that turns the light red and then you can cross. Evelyn pushed the button, and Nico went into auto pilot when the light turned red and the "walk" symbol showed up. So, they crossed a busy road far ahead of us. I ran after them and told them not to do that without us again. Then I got to thinking... how old does Nico have to be before he can walk to and from school by himself? he he. 

Tuesday was a full day. We needed the car so we dropped Guy off at work. Fred Meyer, then a visit to G.G. Nico wanted to bring his Creationary game where you draw a card from the pile and then put legos together to make it look like the picture on the card. So we each took turns. G.G. made a pretty impressive sheep! Nico also got to feed Scamper a dog biscuit, he loves doing that! Then he watched a bit of the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. 

After we left there, we went to a chiropractor appointment. We didn't know that Grandma Salisbury had an appointment there right before us, but we were pleasantly surprised to see her there! She was needing a ride back to Big-O Tires so it was serendipitous that we were there, and we were able to drive her back.

We went home for maybe 10 minutes, then it was time for school. I came into Nico's classroom that day to volunteer. I enjoy making copies and cutting out shapes, I did a lot of that, I also helped some kids with their classwork, and became more familiar with Ms. Lung's style of teaching and personality, which was really great. I plan to volunteer there once a month. 

After the school day was over, Nico and I both drove home. We had about an hour at home before leaving to go pick Guy up from work. We parked in the parking lot and waited for him and admired the really cool looking clouds hanging out on top of the mountains. 

We had home days on Wednesday and Thursday. 

At night Guy has been snuggling with Nico in his bed after reading books and all that, and Nico has been asking Guy questions about when Guy was little. Guy tells him a story, and then Nico tells a story sometimes about himself, but then asks again for Guy to tell him a story about when Guy was young or a baby. Last night Nico asked Guy to tell him about when Nico was a baby and used to poop in his diaper. 

At 6 PM every night we do homework. This includes reading sentences and words, and also saying words that the speech therapist gave us at the parent teacher conference. We are working on combination L sounds, like "flash" which is super hard for him because not only is there an L in the word (he just learned how to do these), the L is the 2nd letter in the word, which requires some tricks. And not only that, it has an SH at the end, which is also something he just learned how to do and doesn't always do it consistently. All those things he has to remember in this one word.

Homework takes us literally like 2-3 minutes. It's just a quick thing every day, to keep his skills up.

I think that's it for this week. Enjoy the Halloween video! There's a theme to the music, tell me if you can figure it out... Guy didn't figure it out, but then I didn't tell him there was a theme to it before he watched it. 

Halloween and Green Chef

Halloweeeeen! Saturday was so much fun. At about 4 PM we hung out with Allicia and Jeff and kids and we all ate dinner together in the "main house". They had invited some of their family over too, so it was a fun party and we ate spaghetti and eye balls (meatballs with melted cheese and a green olive on top). Here is Guy's plate (which I made and saved for later since he did not get home until 5:30-ish)...

After eating, the kids got into their costumes.  Nico initially wore his Fireman costume, then switched to Ninja Turtles, then switched back. His final choice was Fireman. I think the mask for the Ninja Turtle costume got a little old after a while. After Guy came home from work, he ate quickly and we were off! We met Jeff & Allicia at Roosevelt Market over by where we used to live. We went back to our old neighborhood to see if anyone was around giving out candy, nope! Just one that had a bowl on their front door step.

Nico and Evelyn had fun going door to door,  just like last year.  I got a video of it all but my iMovie has been crashing and I haven't been able to use it, but be assured when I figure it out, I'll be posting the video :) We spent most of our time in the East Boise neighborhood, love love LOVE those streets! We took a brief detour onto Warm Springs so that we could visit the Castle like we did last year, and that's actually the only picture I have of trick or treating! (The rest is video). And look, it's not even a good picture because you can only see a blur of green dinosaur Evelyn on the left, and no Nico. You can see Allicia holding pink bunny Ivy, though.

And a picture of our house with our carved pumpkin on the ground with two battery powered tea lights in it. Nico and I had carved it earlier that day.

We had a wonderful time. When we got home, Nico dumped his candy out on the floor and we traded it straight across for a whole bag of Nico-safe lollipops. The next day we did end up going through all his candy piece by piece and Guy looked each one up online to see if it was gluten & corn free. There were a few! Hershey's bars are OK, Heath bars are OK (not Nico's favorite), and then of course the Yummy Earth lollipops. Oh and Kirkland brand peanut butter cups.

So after we got home from trick-or-treating I ran to the PO Box because I got notice that day that we had some mail. I had been waiting to hear back about the big Aromatherapy exam I took a few weeks back, and I had heard from my classmates that some of them had received their exam scores in the mail that very day. So off I went, and found out that indeed I had passed the exam! I'm officially a Registered Aromatherapist! 

Sunday was a good day. Guy facilitated the Bible Study Sunday night since the leader had family in town and couldn't make it. He did a good job. Just like old times!

Tuesday morning we watched Ivy while Allicia and the other kids went out.

Nico asked to hold her so of course I let him.

We put another quilt on our bed because it's been chilly. Nico enjoys using the lines on the quilt as roads for his cars.

Lately Nico has been putting down his iPad of his own accord and playing with his toys. Sometimes I see bursts of development from him and it is fun to experience. He has been snuggly and loving and I've really been enjoying that.

I think Guy has pretty much adapted to the day-life. He is switching to a Monday-Friday schedule starting next week. 8-5, except on some days he'll go in late and come home at 8 PM so he can stay and train the guy that's training.

We are trying out GreenChef.com. They are an ingredient-delivery service. 3 meals per week, they send you the recipes and ALL the ingredients. Organic, grass fed, grain free (there are several types of meal plans you can choose from). I signed up for it because we got our first week FREE, which is worth about $100. We got the box yesterday and it was packed well and very cold. Beautiful recipe print outs and everything is separated in baggies for you. All you have to do is... chop veggies, and then add ingredients at the proper times. All spices are in little bags and you just dump them in.  Wet ingredients are in cute little jars. Everything is labeled.

Tonight was the first night we did a recipe: Mole Chili. It may have been a fail, we think because the amount of cocoa powder and espresso powder added to it was a little much. Guy says if we try to reproduce the recipe and use LESS of those two things, and use a better espresso powder, it would make a difference. It was very bitter because of the espresso, and it really wasn't appetizing to any of us. The "corn bread" muffins (no corn, made with coconut flour) were very tasty. We added honey on top of them. Making the recipe was a breeze and was so easy. I liked that part.

We have 2 more meals this week, a lebanese fish dish and a chicken egg roll bowl.  Looking forward to those. We are also getting a delivery next Wednesday as well. Two weeks for the price of one :) I am hoping that some of these recipes are good enough for me to repeat on my own!! I needed some new recipe ideas!

Until next week!

p.s. forgot to add that Nico, when going door to door at Halloween, the person would give him some candy and a few times Nico would take the candy, look it over, then hand it back to them and say "I already have this one!" hee hee