Clubhouse Cleanup, Rock Party, GG

Last Friday evening we went back over to the Clubhouse to finish clean-up. Guy brought home Tin Roof Tacos for everyone and we ate in the main house. It was strange to be considered guests and not roommates! After dinner, the kiddos played while the rest of us finished cleaning up the Clubhouse.

While I was sweeping the outdoor front area, I came across another black widow spider. I called for Avery to get the Bug-a-Salt gun and Avery let Nico kill it.

On Saturday, Guy and Nico were planning to go shooting with the Cub Scouts in Nampa, but we didn't realize we had to sign up for it and when Guy contacted the coordinator Friday night, they told us there was no more room. Oh well! It probably ended up being a good thing. This is how it went Saturday morning when we decided to set up the bookshelf in the living room:

1. Let's set up the bookshelf today
2. We need to set up the couches where they're going first
3. Before that we need to unpack these boxes to get them out of the way
4. We should probably first fill out the move-in survey which we've been putting off, because look at these gouges on the floor (not from us)
5. While we do this let's make a list of all the things the handy-woman needs to fix when she comes back
6. Ok, great, the bookshelf is where we want it. Now we need the stud finder. Do you know where the stud finder is? 
7. I found it! It's out of batteries. Do we have any AAA batteries? No? I will go to the store (Guy)
8. While I'm at the store, do we need anything else? Yes: light bulbs, and drywall anchors.
9. The first store didn't have the right light bulbs, go to a 2nd store.
10. Now we need the drill to screw the bookshelf support into the wall.
11. I can't find our drill, I will go borrow Jeff's

He finished just in time for lunch. We had lunch, and then Guy took Nico to Urban Air. Guy had promised Nico a fun trip on Saturday to make up for not being able to go shooting.

When they came back, Guy mowed the front yard. Then, pizza time! We had our first pizza night at our new house, and we were able to bake all the pizzas at the same time. They were done in a flash. Nico chose to watch episodes of Captain Underpants for our movie night.

Sunday afternoon, Nico helped Guy pick up fallen sticks in the backyard before Guy mowed. There was a lot from the recent storm.

Later that afternoon, there was a Rock Party at the Idaho Museum of Mining and Geology next to the Old Penitentiary. It was a HOT day but I found a nice spot to sit in the shade while Nico went around to all the booths. We had just enough time to get a sticker from each of the 12 booths before the Rock Party was over. He was able to turn in his card with all the stickers on it in exchange for a stone. He chose a rose quartz.

Cracking open a geode.

We ran into Jeff and Allicia and kids while we were there. So funny to see them in the wild. Instead of saying "see you at home" when we left, we said "see you later".

Monday after school Nico and I went to visit GG. The traffic was bad so we ended up being about 20 minutes late. They were in their backyard playing Scrabble Upwords. We joined them on their back porch. Melody, Aunt Pat's daughter, stopped by while we were there. She refilled with water their fountain she mended last week, and then hung out to chat.

GG is giving us her old TV. Guy will stop by there some day soon to pick it up. It was a little too heavy for me to load up into the car while we were there Monday.

Wednesday, Nico's class had a bird field trip. I found this post on Facebook from the Intermountain Bird Observatory regarding Nico's class's visit:

Usually rain puts a damper on our banding research, but not today! We nearly cancelled our banding activities at our River Research Station with Adams Elementary this morning, but decided to give it a try during a break in showers. Soon after the 4th grade class arrived, we could tell they brought us good luck. We started catching a number of birds with just seven of our nets up and running.

Then, as storm clouds began to reappear and the class headed back to the bus, we really hit the motherload. Gretel and Joni ended up with 34 birds (nearly all of them Yellow-rumped Warblers) suddenly dropping into net 11 all at once! They hurriedly extracted the birds, we closed our nets early, and we finished banding the whole lot just as rain drops began to fall. 

We banded nearly 50 birds with nets open for just two hours! Not a bad day along the Boise River 😁

I asked Nico what the bags were, and he said those bags have BIRDS inside them. I was not expecting that. They open up each bag one at a time and put a "bracelet" (as Nico called it) on the bird and let it go.

Wednesday while Nico was at Youth Group, Guy and I headed over to the Clubhouse to pick up the last of our stuff. We still had our bikes and scooters over there, and a few other odds and ends. We hung out for a bit with everyone. The kids are having a blast using the Clubhouse to play in. Sock-skating, and throwing bouncy balls everywhere,  it's the perfect place for that. They are still mulling over ideas on what to do with the room.

Nico has signed up to be a hall monitor. He had training today. He has a specific day and time each week that he will monitor the halls (just a 20 minute blip), and he is very excited. He told me he signed up to be a hall monitor because he "doesn't like recess". ?? I asked him about it and he said he doesn't know why he doesn't like recess, he just likes to do school work or sit down and read at recess, calling himself an "indoor person".

I suspect he may have had a hard day at recess one day. I couldn't get any more out of him surreptitiously.

When I ask him what he did at recess on any particular day he always says "play four square".

Enjoy the video!

Moving Day!

Well this week is all about the big move! Most of this blog experience will be communicated through video, which you can watch at the end of the blog.

It was a bittersweet week with an awkward moment at the end of Saturday, moving day, when we were tired at our new house and I was looking forward to going home and going to bed. But, we were already home. It was a strange feeling to be home in our new house, but wanting to go back to familiar Clubhouse to snuggle in for the night. First night at a new place!

Saturday night we ordered pizza from Smokey Mountain Pizza and waited 2 hours for it to arrive before I called them and they said their printer never printed the order so they never received it. They said they could get it to us in 45 minutes but it was already 8PM so we cancelled the order and ate other things at home instead. To make up for it, we ordered pizza for lunch on Sunday after church.

We woke up this morning to a broken dishwasher (puddle-jumping with socks on in the middle of the night - eek!) and a broken water heater. The handy-woman stopped by today and fixed the water heater, and will be back on Saturday to fix the washer.

Now on to some pictures, then the video at the end!

Friday walking to our new house with Avery and Ivy in the afternoon to pick up our key. I told them how to recognize our house so they know how to get there in the future.

Playing Switch with Avery

Friday night after receiving our key, we went over to explore the house. Nico wanted to be in charge of pictures.

Bedtime snack, the last night in the Clubhouse

Moving day! Pile of boxes in the garage.

Emptying out the Clubhouse

Avery eating a tomato like an apple while watching the moving men load up the truck.

Movers done!

The first boxes in our new house

Discovering old treasures

 Drawer trash

This is how perfectly our corner table fits into the dining room.

After the moving men left, time to eat Jimmy Johns!

Evelyn came over to help Nico unpack. Not sure he would have been motivated otherwise. Still have a lot left to do, though!

Nico doing spelling homework at my desk.

Tuesday, Avery, Ivy, and myself met Guy at Boise Fry Company for lunch.

Nico at school helping to fill up their class' bird feeder. The Bird by Bird organization posted this picture on their Facebook page, that's where I got it.

From the school Facebook page, pictures of Nico and his classmates making dog biscuits. Nico ate dog biscuit dough that day, containing regular flour. Oops.

Now to the video!

Geode, and our new Sign!

On Saturday Nico and I went over to Grandma and Papa's house in the early afternoon. We stayed for a few hours and met Jonny and Alanna. The grownups discussed Thanksgiving while Nico and Lexie played. I left Nico there and he stayed overnight!

Guy wasn't able to come with us because he had a very bad migraine :(

Nico's tummy aches started back up again, we left church early on Sunday because he was feeling too sick, and we skipped Bible Study on Sunday night because he wasn't feeling well (Guy was still able to go!) He's gone to school every day this week with a tummy ache, it seems to start shortly after eating and can last a very long time. We are still trying to get to the bottom of it.

Nico found a Geode in his stash of toys and so he broke it open.

Playing Clue on top of an unfinished puzzle. The rules of this game were as follows: You can't talk. It was quite a challenge to communicate without talking to play this game, but we did it. Well, THEY did it, because I lost the "no-talk" challenge about halfway into it. Oops!

Nico rediscovered the National Geographic Kids magazines. He told me all about "Urban Sprawl" that he learned about at school, about how people were tearing down animal habitats to build housing that no one needed. He said that if he was president he would stop it from happening.

He also seems to have an interest in traveling, to all over the world, and expressed interest in being a photographer so that he could join National Geographic Kids.

He asked us tonight that if we could move to any place OUTSIDE the US, where would we move to? Guy's answer was New Zealand, Nico's answer was London. I'd have to agree with Nico, I think that would be fun.

Tonight all of us went to band practice together, it might become more of a regular thing, as I work up to maybe playing the piano in the church band every once in a while. When we got home, we saw the new sign that Allicia got us for The Clubhouse!

Gorgeous!

Here are some pictures that are from Grandpa and Grandma Russell's visit last last week, when they went to the Botanical Garden.

They had the Scarecrow Stroll going on during their visit

That's it for this week!

4th Clubhouse Anniversary, and a RAISE!!

Last Friday Nico was able to take his microscope to school with him, the teacher said it would be ok for him to do that. He's been bringing it with him every day since, and whenever the class has time, they open it up.

After Guy got home from work on Friday they went for a walk and picked up some water to put on slides for the microscope. They collected some water on the side of the road, and sure enough it had swimming things in it.  They tested the canal water next and it was clean (I still wouldn't drink it - he he).

On Saturday we celebrated 4 years in the Clubhouse by having a pancake breakfast with Jeff & Allicia and the kiddos. After breakfast, the kiddos played together while the four grown-ups played a new board game. It was a fun way to celebrate 4 years. All of us agreed that among all the people we know, we have the best housemates. It just seems to work so well around here.

Nico had baseball games Monday and Tuesday evenings. Monday when we got home from the game, I had set up the table with two pieces of leftover birthday cake (I froze them after Nico's birthday) and then a wrapped present for Guy. We lit candles and sang Happy Birthday and Nico and Guy both ate some cake. Guy's birthday is not until October, but the present I got for him he was wanting and was planning to buy it himself, so I told him not to buy it, and gave it to him that Monday, the day it arrived. We will still celebrate on his actual birthday, too, but this was a fun precursor!

On Tuesday evening, Nico's cousin Lexie had a soccer game in the same sports complex as his baseball game, so I walked over to try to find her game. I found Jonny and Alanna and sat down with them for a while and watched Lexie play, she is an awesome goalie! After both their games were over we met up again in the field, Lexie and Nico ran toward each other when they saw each other, and gave big hugs. It was really sweet.

On Wednesday Guy stayed home from work because he wasn't feeling well, but we got a call telling Guy that he got a promotion and a 9% raise! That was great news!!! I am so very proud of him. He is a Technical Engineer II now. They told him it would be more responsibility but that he's probably already doing all of it anyway. Hehe. His boss said that when Guy called in sick he said Oh Shoot! because that was the day he was going to tell Guy about his raise. I am glad that they called to tell us :)  And Guy had today off from work and has tomorrow off too! He has been working non stop the past two weeks, evenings and weekends. He's been working on issues that were popping up at work, so his boss gave him a few days off. 

Tonight Evelyn came over for dinner. They did art. Well, Evelyn did art while Nico did a workbook on how to write cursive. After dinner they made Halloween decorations at Evelyn's art desk in the garage.

Nico wearing his new Newport, OR sweatshirt from Grandma and Papa's recent vacation. He also received a chocolate truffle from a chocolate shop. He says "All this Newport, Oregon stuff makes me want to move to Newport!"

Readathon is still on the back burner for Nico at the moment, but we have still been accruing reading minutes. He gets minutes when someone reads to him, so several hours have been spent lately reading the book Matilda. Guy reads this to him. When Guy was younger, apparently he liked this book so much that as soon as he finished it for the first time, he went right back to the beginning to start again. We are up to about 16 hours total for Readathon. 

The moment when Nico sees the swimmers in the ditch water!

The Clubhouse, and Moscow!

Last Saturday was a big day - we rearranged the Clubhouse! We added our huge table from our storage unit and moved everything else around to accommodate. You can check out the video at the end of the blog to see the process.

The table is a corner table, the one that used to be in my parents' cabin! The corner piece of the bench is supposed to be supported by wall on each side, but we have no wall for it to touch, so it is unusable at the moment, else you fall through and land on the floor! Our plan is to add a third leg (well, fourth leg), so that it can stand on its own. We will get this done this weekend.

On Monday, Grandma Camp started! Grandma Salisbury picked Nico up at 9AM and they drove to Mountain Home to pick up more cousins. On Tuesday the whole crew drove up to Moscow, ID in a rented passenger van.

Mom sent me these pool pictures the evening they got into town. Playing in the same hotel pool he was playing in when we visited in June!

(After Nico got home tonight I had him tell me what was happening in each picture)

Running in the water

Playing with paddle boards

Eating at Mad Greek. He got the sparkling burger without the bun

With Grammy

At Grammy's house

Sitting around Grammy's table, she handed out popsicles. Each popsicle had a joke on it. "What did the rabbit give his girlfriend? A 14 carrot ring."

At Kamiak Butte, Nico was interviewing my Aunt Margy. Each grandkid was assigned someone to interview. Grandma provided interview questions in each kid's black binder (as seen on table).

On the stage where Grandma and Papa were married.

On their way home from Moscow today they stopped to see my Aunt Mary Anne, I'm so glad they were able to do that! She sent home some walnuts from their tree, and pears for us. Can't wait to add the walnuts to the banana bread I need to make with our bananas. I will grind them up first... Nico won't eat it if he can tell there's nuts in it! Heehee. But it makes the bread taste sooooo good. Thank you Aunt Mary Anne!!!

And here's the whole travel crew

They were also delayed in Riggins for a few hours because of a crash on the highway that closed the roads for a while. I kept checking their location on my phone. It was nice to be able to do that :) I picked him up from my parents' house at 6:30 tonight.

This week while Nico was gone, Guy and I went over to my parents' empty house to watch a movie on Tuesday. Other things we did this week - we hung new blinds in The Clubhouse and watched a lot of shows on Netflix! Guy was still working during the day so we did fun things in the evening. One evening we even went somewhere after dinner! Not verrrry exciting, but just something unique we don't usually do (leaving the house after dinner, that is).

On to the video!