This past week we've spent a lot of time packing. We've made quite a pile of boxes in the garage. Once we pack a box, we take it to the garage. Keeping it in the Clubhouse would be difficult.
Step by step we've also been cleaning the place up so that cleaning will not be as huge a deal later. On Saturday Guy and I cleaned the screen in the kitchen, which had never been cleaned. If you remember how grimy it was before, then this picture will shock you:
It's like we have acquired another light in the kitchen. The sun streaming through is amazing. Guy says he doesn't know why we didn't do that before.
It has been fun to think about all the things we'll have control over after we move - even the things like yard work, Guy is very excited that we will have roses in the front yard and mentioned he'd like to check out a book from the library about roses.
We also packed a lot Saturday morning, starting with the books. We told Nico to not pack the books he wanted to read. He chose to keep out 2 Dog Man books.
Saturday night it was my turn to choose the movie again, and I chose Dumbo. It was an OK movie.
Sunday after church there was a picnic at the Grandparents' Salisbury house in honor of Labor Day. Most of Nico's cousins were there. Here they all are playing Happy Salmon. The adults played this game later, too. It's fun!
The adults also played the game Pit, to win prizes.
Grandma started them all on a treasure hunt and they ran around finding clues. Each of the adults held one of the clues. For one of the clues, Nico had to read a story to everyone.
Prizes! Each kid got to choose a small bag, and then a large bag for their family.
Nico played Switch with Kai for a while.
It was a perfect afternoon! Thank you to Ma and Pa for having us over and providing the yummy food. Alanna also brought a lemon cake that looked delicious! I gave Guy a huge piece with ice cream on top and he enjoyed it.
Tuesday Nico went downstairs to play video games with the crew after school. Avery taught him how to play Bomber Man.
School picture day was Wednesday. And... nachos for breakfast?
The constant state of the kitchen. Boxes!
I'm putting together a video of our moving, which I'll post next week. Plus video and pictures of our new house.
We had a great Easter weekend! It started off Saturday with a library trip. Guy and Nico went together while I did some work. There was a robot there they could play with, and they were able to check one out from the library! There's an app you can download to interact with it. Nico played with it nonstop after they got home. Over the next few days it was one of the only things he did when he had free time. We told him it didn't count as iPad time, since he was "programming". There are some video snippets at the end of the blog!
Saturday afternoon we went to my brother Jonny's house for an Easter BBQ. There was yummy food, and an Easter egg hunt for the kids.
Ready...Set...
Go!
Nico made a new friend while we were there, and as we were leaving, his friend said, "I'm going to miss you. We really had a fun time." It was very sweet. Some video from the BBQ at the end of the blog!
Sunday we were at church early. Guy was running sound, Nico had practice with the kids group because they were going to be on stage for one of the songs, and I had practice for a piano/flute duet I was doing with another gal.
On the way to the church Nico said that he didn't want to do the thing on stage anymore, because he was nervous. I told him I was nervous about my thing, too, and that it's ok to be nervous and it shouldn't keep us from doing the thing. After I finished talking, a Parry Gripp song started playing, his songs are so silly, this one says "there's a young girl talking about herself. You can't stop her." And Nico said "Mommy, this song makes me feel better, because it's about a young girl talking about herself, and she's not nervous about talking about herself."
Engage Boise live streams all their services, so I snuck some screen shots off the video to capture these. Nico was in charge of waving the flag during the song.
And we played "Fairest Lord Jesus" during the offering.
Sunday afternoon, Guy was able to take a good long nap. Afterward, we decided to ride bikes. We biked on the greenbelt and we went far. Nico wanted to keep going but we told him we needed to turn around. It's a good thing we did, because the wind was actually helping us on our way out, and against us on the way back. We stopped every few minutes on our way back to check my map to see how much further. Nico's legs were aching and he was having a hard time riding against the wind. Guy rode in front of us on the way back to help block the wind for us. We were gone about an hour and a half.
Swimming on Monday.
Nico eating nachos, reading Peanuts. He is careful to delineate which of the two Peanuts books is his and which is Daddy's. It's important to keep track.
Nico excavating something from an Egyptian pyramid, from his Little Passports monthly subscription.
On Wednesday Nico passed Swimming Level 2!! It's the end of the swimming session and time to sign up for new classes, so Level 3 for him will start next week! I am very proud of him.
Wednesday morning after Nico left for school, I travelled up to Pullman, WA for a business trip. Since there's family in the area it's always a mix of business and family! My mom was already in Pullman when I arrived, along with my Aunt Mary Anne! My Aunt Liz came today, and I was also able to see my cousins and my Uncle Jerry.
It has been SO fun to be surrounded by family even while being here for business! I travelled to Farmington today for work and will drive there tomorrow as well, returning Saturday to Boise.
Friday we started our trip to Arlington! Well, Yakima. We decided to split the trip up into two days. We didn't give Nico his headphones with music right away, decided to wait until Baker City (2 hour drive) where we stopped to have lunch. We were barely passing Nampa when Nico said his first "Are we there yet?" It was hilarious. I know he doesn't really have any context for how long the trip takes, he was a few years younger the last time we made the trip. He asked a lot of questions on the trip, mainly, stuff like "What time is it?" and "Are we in Yakima yet?" Guy kept track of how many times Nico asked "Are we there yet?" (14 times) and how many times he asked a question that wasn't exactly that, but was in the spirit of it, like "When are going to be in Yakima?" (26 times)
When we gave him his headphones with music, he was very very excited, and bip bopped along with the music he was listening to.
When we got to Yakima, we checked in, and then drove to Miner Burger. Guy always breaks his gluten rule for Miner Burger.
Then we went to Jimmy John’s to pick up some grub for Nico. 30 minutes after eating, we went to the pool! Watching Nico walk down the stairs with flippers on was funny. The two people behind the front desk got a real kick out of his getup.
He started shivering and turning blue after about 30 minutes. We stayed for a little bit longer and then trucked it upstairs so he could take a warm shower.
Saturday morning it was time to drive to Arlington!
We arrived around 10 AM. Lots of hugs all around! When Nico "met" Uncle Tom again, he said to him "You used to hold me up when I was baby". He was referring to a picture we have on our fridge where Tom is holding up Nico.
We hung out for a few hours until it was time to eat Pizza! A puzzle, cars, and some toys from when Guy was little.
Mom showed me her Microgreens!
Then we went to the beach cottage on Camano Island. Wow!! It was quite a retreat. It was so peaceful. Don't worry, there is a video below showing you guys the walkthrough. It was beautifully decorated and had everything we needed. It had two rooms, one for the bed and one for the tv. After Nico went to bed every night, Guy and I would watch a movie. And the beach you could see out the front door. It was a short walk away....
We taught Nico how to throw rocks over his head into the ocean or at things on the beach. He practiced a lot, it was sometimes scary to be near him while he did it. Sometimes the rocks went straight up into the sky.
DUCK, GUY!
Then they started a band. It was pretty good. Mom did the shuffle on the gravel for some added sound.
(Mom provided some of these pictures. Thank you!!!)
That night we went to the Chatterbox for dinner, which is a restaurant in Stanwood that serves Thai, Indian, American food (and more maybe?). They were happy to make Nico fried rice with no eggs and no onions, so it was basically rice and beef. If you didn't know already, one of Nico's favorite dishes is rice and ground beef. So this was perfect.
Sunday we went to church at Marysville Church of the Nazarene, which is where we used to go when we lived there. We saw a lot of people we hadn't seen in a while, it was really great. Nico even remembered to tell his Sunday School teacher that he was gluten free and he said No to a cookie!
After church we drove by our old house. They had painted it yellow and it didn't look the same.
Sunday we ate roast chicken and a bunch of yummy sides for lunch. That afternoon we went to the Kangaroo farm and fed kangaroos and other animals.
I asked Guy if he wanted to own a kangaroo farm and he said No. Good to know. It was really cool to see all the animals they had there.
Some other Sunday moments.
Nico and Tom raced to put their nesting dolls together. Nico spent several occasions playing with these nesting dolls on this trip.
Guy took a short trip to the beach that night
On Monday we took a trip to the beach right before heading over to the Grandparents Russell.
Other pictures from that day...
At the river
Looking for birds through his new binoculars (thanks Grandma & Grandpa!!)
Coloring eggs
Helping Grandpa barbecue our lunch
We left Guy there that night and we took Grandma with us to the beach cottage! Nico read Grandma two comic books before bed, and then me and her watched a girl movie!! 27 Dresses, it was very cute.
Tuesday morning we snuggled him up with blankets in front of the tv to watch a movie while eating his breakfast muffin. Nico definitely took advantage of their wide range of movie titles on our trip. We usually had time for an entire movie in the mornings before we would leave to head to Arlington.
Tuesday was a slow picture day. I took a trip to Safeway to walk around while the crew went to the creek for a walk. Thanks Mom for taking pictures! I love that he got a piggy back ride from both Guy and Uncle Tom!
Tuesday afternoon Guy and I and Nico went to visit Rusty and Ellen. They were our mentors when we were living in Arlington, so we really like to stay connected with them. They had a Thomas the Train set that Nico played with while we were there.
Tuesday evening was a yummy pot roast with potatoes and parsnips and carrots. It was very tasty. Then we said our goodbyes and drove out to the beach house for one last night before heading home.
Our trip home on Wednesday took 10 1/2 hours! I think we agree that next time we will break up our trip in both directions, and perhaps stay over in Pendleton on our way back to Boise. The traffic in Seattle area was very bad, we hopped over to the express toll lane thinking we could do that with 3 people in the car, but I think we'll be getting a bill for that, I think you need to have a flex-pass to be able to do that. Totally worth it, though! It would have added at least another 45 minutes to our trip if we would have been stuck in that traffic. We listened to my phone and even took a short cut through Alderwood Mall Parkway to get on 405. It saved us 7 minutes. :)
We were very tired when we got home that night. Nico's friends were outside when we pulled up, and he jumped right on his scooter and started playing. Nico needed that outdoor running around time. Then dinner, showers, a quick trip to Flying M, and then bed time! While we were gone, Jeff cleaned our shower tiles, it looked like a completely new shower. It was an awesome thing to come home to!!
Today we did some reorganizing in here and ran some errands. I can't believe it's already past Nico's bed time and it feels like the day has just started. Wow! Time is just fleeing!
We had so much fun in Arlington and are looking forward to doing it again next year! Thank you Grandpa and Grandma Russell for all the food and all the gifts and the hospitality and fun and adventure. We had a blast and can't wait to see you guys again in July for Nico's birthday!
