Cabin Fever! Wait. Cabin, and then also a Fever

On Saturday the boys went up to the cabin for a visit! I was helping a friend out that day so I stayed behind. Bruce and Rory and Lexie were also at the cabin and Nico was able to play with them. He spent a lot of time hanging out with Bruce, they played in the snow on the porch. They also went sledding down the driveway. I forgot to pack Nico's boots in the bag, so he wore his shoes most of the time. Poor wet feet! But he didn't really care.

I love that last pic of Nico sliding down the ice with Bruce racing next to him. Nico sometimes refers to Bruce as his brother. I am so happy they got to spend so much time together. It makes my heart happy!

Grandma also had a little surprise for him - a brand new dot-to-dot book! Before they had left that morning, Nico had chosen 10 color-by-numbers to print out to take with him, saying that Grandma and others might want to do some with him. So he had some to hand out and it looks like Rory is doing one of those while Nico works on his dot-to-dot book. He was very excited to show the book to me when he came home. "Guess what IIIII got.... A DOT-TO-DOT BOOK! A RED ONE!" Grandma had sent him a blue one a few weeks earlier.

Thanks for having the boys over Ma & Pa! They had a blast!

The next morning before church he got down on the floor to work on his dot-to-dot book with his special pencil.

For a few days he was watching the movie HOME over and over and over again on his iPad. It is a great movie, I don't blame him.

Sunday night was the start of the Bible Study that Guy is leading, it was a low key night, we just did introductions and talked a little about the book we'll be reading. It went really well and are happy to be a part of it. Nico came with us and they had some fun things for the kids to do in the other room. Legos for Nico.

On Monday we went to the Discovery Center again, Nico spent the whole time (we stay for 1 hour) at the engineering station building a race truck. Evelyn joined him and she built a race car. After his was built, he tried it out on the tilted race track.

We had a few ho-hum days there, then yesterday (Thursday) I woke up with Nico snuggling me and he felt a little hot. Then he coughed sporadically that morning. I thought he might be getting sick, but I kept writing off the heat I was feeling from his forehead. After Guy left for work I figured what the heck I'll check his temperature, and he was 100.7. Bunker down time! Unfortunately he had lost his iPad privileges for the day, so we couldn't zone out on the iPad. We spent most of the morning doing color-by-numbers. We snuggled on the couch at about 11 and he zonked out for a nap. He woke up feeling groggy and icky and complained of a tummy ache. Essential oils really perked him up but then he was down again a few hours later. His tummy was really bothering him. He never got sick, but we spent the evening reading books to him on the couch because he just didn't want to move. His temp stayed at about 102.5 for a while and his fever finally broke in the middle of the night sometime. Strangely, he hasn't coughed at all since yesterday morning. I figure the illness was probably just a stomach thing? He's been nibbling on food this morning like he's recovering from a stomach bug though he never threw up.

So that's the story of yesterday, and last night why I just couldn't squeeze in a blog update!

Today we're just hanging out. iPad is back.

Family, School, Friends, Jan Brett

The Grandparents Salisbury invited us up to the cabin on Monday, it was nice to see them after missing Thanksgiving! We also celebrated Chrtistmas! Nico got a Fireman costume and legos which he loves. We also had wonderful food, all gluten free, and very very tasty. Nico ate a ton of sausage and meatballs. Thank you Pa and Ma!

Guy and Nico put legos together while we were there and then more when we got home, then the next day Nico decided to put the legos together himself. He followed the directions and put together an excavator all by himself. He brought it up to me with it hidden behind his back and then he said "Surprise!" and showed it to me. I was so proud of him!!

Lately Nico has been fond of Color-by-Numbers. I print free ones from a website. He has done about 4 of them so far and is on his fifth one.

Next up: A slew of pictures from school. I think these are from his field trip to BSU where they did Special Olympics. Nico said they got to let their balloons go in the air after they were all done. Cool!

His whole class. Miss Erica (teacher), Miss Joanne (Assistant), and Miss Karen (Speech Language Pathologist). Nico can name some of the kids.

The next picture is Nico and his class dancing along to the DINO STOMP. Nico had us search for this on YouTube. I wasn't sure what he was saying at first but he insisted it was called "Dino Stomp" so that is what I searched for. He saw the video and pointed to it. voila! And then later that week I get this picture and see all his class dancing to it.

We decorated Christmas last night with Jeff and Allicia and kids. We used our own ornaments and decorated the silver tree. They are not putting up their HUGE tree this year, too big, nowhere to put it, and it takes a lot of time. I totally understand! So we did the silver tree.

Nico keeps coming home with surprises from school, a slinky yesterday and today some cool star sunglasses. He says he got the sunglasses out of the treasure box. And the slinky he says he got because he made it "all the way to the top."

Today we went to the library to see Jan Brett! She is a children's author that Mom Russell introduced to me/us many years ago. We got there at 9:30 (it started at 10) and were lucky enough to find a parking spot in the library parking lot. Yay! See the video below for our adventure. We sat very close to the front and Jan's husband needed help carrying the box that the LIVE bunny was in, so he asked me. So yes, I had a conversation with Jan Brett's husband as we walked the big box back to the TOUR BUS which I got into. We talked about Boise and bunnies and hedgehogs. Apparently Jan's husband really likes bunnies and the particular one they brought with them he calls "Spoo" and it hangs out with him in a cage in his office while he works. They used to have hedgehogs, four of them, but he said they are too wild and are hard to take care of, so they stopped. But they do keep chickens. He was also very worried about the amount of people stuffed into the library room, he told the bus driver that they were breaking a lot of fire codes. hehe. It was super crowded in there. The video shot of the crowd was taken about 15 minutes before it started, and by the time it did start, there were many more people.

I bought a copy of her new book Animal's Santa, and they had signed name plates to put in the book if we didn't want to stand in line to have her sign one for us. We did have to leave early to get back in time for lunch and school, so we didn't stand in line for an autograph, but Allicia took our book and stood in line for us and had it signed. They were apparently 3rd in line and were out of there pretty darn quick!

Now the video! Plus another video about our first day of December with Nico enjoying his two advent calendars.