Lumberjacks and Halloween

Saturday all of us drove up to the cabin for a Lumberjack Party! We were the first ones there and got to have Grandma and Papa all to ourselves for a few hours! It was perfect. My mom served chili and turkey meatballs and sides. Everyone was supposed to bring a dessert and on Friday Nico and I made Sunbutter Chocolate Pumpkin Cups to bring with us. They were tasty!

I put some Halloween Jamberry nails on Lexie, just like the ones I put on Nico.

They matched up their fingers with matching nails

Showing everyone their matching nails

Nico not smiling at the camera when I told him to smile. hehe

There was a contest to guess the weight of a HUGE pumpkin, and also games to guess how many candies were in a jar, and how many M&Ms were in a bottle. Nico asked if his two imaginary friends Bico and Dico could also place guesses, and Bico ended up winning the pumpkin! I forgot to take a picture of it but it's sitting right outside (68 pounds!) I think Allicia and I are going to try to cook it up and freeze it so we have pumpkin puree throughout the year! Then, Nico won the jar of candy. The jar is a beautiful clear glass pumpkin with candies in it and a removable lid. 

It was a fun and full day, we came home happy. Thanks so much for the yummy food and the fun time Papa and Grandma!

Monday was Halloween of course, and we met everyone at the Roosevelt Market and then walked home from there, trick-treating on the way. Just like last year! I left early so I could catch the Financial Peace University class that was all about real estate and mortgages. 

Guy told me that Nico was very focused on trick-or-treating, and he got a lot more candy than the others. He was really committed and ended up with 125 pieces. He has been sorting them, trucking them around on the Spring Fair trucks, counting them and recording how many of each type he has (in his new red notebook that Gma Russell sent his way). 

Check out the video of the Boo Bash and of Halloween at the end of the entry!

Nico had a doctor's appointment today and we will be starting a few new supplements. I am excited to see how they may help his sleep and stomach.

Today was our parent-teacher conference, and Nico is doing really well in school, has a lot of friends, and has very good handwriting. He is in the upper level reading group and the upper level math group. They said he's very humorous and they enjoy having him in the class (this was the teacher and the student teacher talking). When he stood up front during his Star Student week showing his friends his pictures, he showed everyone a picture of someone reading him a book (this would be GG or Grandma Russell) and asked everyone to make 3 guesses what the book was. No one could guess so he kept asking them to try again. No one could see the picture closely so the possibility of books was really endless. They say he's very precise, and is good at seeing patterns in math.

They showed us his journal, and I wish I could show you guys every page, but I only took a picture of one of them. He's been really into car symbols lately and so notice that on Grandma's truck he wrote "GMC" because that is what she owns. 

Nico was very curious about Horseflies so we looked them up in the book that GG gave Nico. We ended up looking up a lot more than just Horseflies, and we even got out the ruler so we could see in real life how big some of these bugs get. Horseflies are HUGE!

We heard yesterday that GG is in the hospital with congestive heart failure, looks like it can be managed with the right combo of meds and we are praying for health and recovery! Love you Grandma!!

Enjoy the two videos this week!

The Week of Celebration

Friday we invited Sammy and Aadam over to play inside the main house! Jeff and Allicia and crew were out of town so we used their living room for a play date. They colored and wrote books and had a grand time. It was nice to have the space available to invite them inside!

That afternoon they played out front on our table.

On Saturday morning we went to see GG. Guy was able to come with us because we did it on a Saturday, and it was great! As always really fun to see her and talk about what she's been up to and what she has planned in the coming weeks. Nico brought over his Grosseries to show GG. We may have left them there, in fact! I still need to call her and ask if we left them.

On Sunday Guy helped at the sound booth again at church. I think it will become a regular thing!

Monday was Columbus Day, which we affectionally renamed Columbo's Day, a day to watch an episode of Columbo. We picked one of our favorites. Guy and I watched while Nico was in school.



Monday started Guy's VACATION week! He took the whole week off from work. While he's been home, we have sorted through stuff, taken a load to the Youth Ranch to give away, watched lots of Netflix, bought lots of snacks, eaten lots of snacks, and on Wednesday night we even had a PARTY! We bought cupcakes to celebrate Guy's birthday and went to Trader Joe's and filled our carts with all those snacky items and dips that always look so good but you never buy because, well, they can get expensive! But really, Trader Joe's is cheap, although spending $120 on snack items was really a piece of cake for us. We are enjoying blowing all our money this paycheck.

The party on Wednesday was just under the covered porch and we had Jeff & Allicia, plus Tiffanie over. The guests that are staying in the suite above us, Vanessa and her 3 year old Ansel also came to the party, they've become good friends of the family. She bought us flowers. We ate all the snackie items from Trader Joe's, then cupcakes. Finger food heaven! Sammy is also gluten free, and Tiffanie told me that at the party he was like a child in Costco eating all the samples except this time he could actually eat them (because all our food was gluten free!) We sent them home with hummus and salami and veggies for Sammy's lunch. He is growing into quite the foodie and only 8 years old.

I captured only one picture. You can't see the rest of the people/kids that were at the tables, but you CAN see a small section of the dips and chips and crackers we got.

We purchased Nico his Star Wars Lego that he has wanted for a very long time. We ordered it last week and it was delivered on Monday. We opened it up and started putting it together straight away.

Before opening the box

Just starting out

Getting close to the halfway mark...

It is not together yet, but we are close.

Random pictures. Nico is tall enough to ride his blue bike now!

Picture by Nico

It is fun having Guy home. He takes Nico to school with me and picks him up with me. Guy even got to spend some time working on a project - building a card shuffler with legos, using a lego motor to power it. Want to see how it works?

Illness, Joy, Books

This past week was a week of illness but there were some bright spots in it too! Here's the good and the bad.

On Friday Allicia texted me asking me if I could watch the kids while she took Ivy to the doctor. No problem. We all walked Nico to school. Allicia called and told me they were heading to the ER so Ivy could get some blood tests and an IV. Allicia's mother in law came to take the kids to Jump Time for the morning, and I met them back at the house at noon. In the mean time I went to see Allicia at the hospital and brought her some supplies.

Got Avery down for a nap and Evelyn off to Kindergarten. But then received a phone call that Nico had a potty accident at the school and that I needed to come get him. Avery was napping so I called Tiffanie and had her come over and sit while I walked over to get Nico. By the time we got home, Allicia and Ivy were back.

Nico had a virus (we think), and he felt good and bad over the weekend. Since things were moving quickly through him at first, he was very hungry Saturday morning, so 3 waffles it is! Then he started feeling sick and late that night he threw up. Sunday he was munching on stuff and felt good enough to request pizza that night and we let him eat what he wanted, which was almost his entire personal pizza. On a good day he eats the whole thing and is stuffed. Guy and I regret that we didn't stop him from eating so much. He had stomach pain all the next day and couldn't get up off the couch. Tuesday morning was much better and he popped out of bed and wanted to go to school. He asked me if I had bought more waffles. He didn't get a waffle that day, in fact he barely ate any breakfast and I was worried about him at school. He looked so tired after walking to school. But he made it, and was happy. We are pretty much back to normal now.

The bad stuff is over! That was quick. The rest is good stuff.

This evening while Nico was getting dressed for bed we were talking about feelings, and he stood and thought for a minute and said. I am feeling... happy, and JOY! God puts bottles of joy inside of me and then he pours them out. I asked him questions about it and while he was bubbling with... joy.. he told me again. God fills up bottles with joy while God's inside his heart. Then God peeks out of his heart ("like this" and then he pretended he was peeking out) and dumps all the joy from the bottles into Nico. Then it just comes out and Nico said "I feel it right now!" Then we sat down on the couch and read through the Life and Work of Rube Goldberg. We flipped to all the pictures of his inventions. For example,

Nico in fact came up with his own invention. While Nico was sick, Guy ran to the library and brought us each back a book. He brought me Tale of Sand and brought back the Rube Goldberg book for him and Nico to look through. They sat on the couch and read through invention after invention, and then Nico came up with his own.  He still needs to draw a picture for it, but here it is..

Mouse (A) sees convincingly real wooden cheese (B) and comes out for a bite.  Biting cheese causes the mouse's teeth to fall in bucket (C). Grabber (D) takes teeth from bucket and into

blender (E) which blends them up into teeth juice, which is poured into glass (F).

Man (G) drinks juice, making him sick and throws up in bowl (H).  He throws

vomit out window (I) and into soil (J), which causes monster teeth plant to grow.

I would show you the picture of the monster plant that Nico wanted in the story but it is very scary. Not one that he drew but one that he found on the internet after Guy searched "monster plant". In fact, if you want to see it, you can search google for "monster plant" and click on the "Images" link and it's the first one.

We also discovered a drawing contest advertised in the scholastic book order form. If you win, then Eric Litwin (the original author of Pete the Cat books) will come to your school. You have to draw a picture of your favorite animal singing a song. Nico got right on it. I provided no ideas, he did it all on his own.

I just showed this picture to Guy and he told me where Nico got this from!! Apparently an episode of StoryBots has a Tiger Song that they had shown me a few weeks ago and I had forgotten. Anyway, watch the video... you will see where the Tiger goes rawr rawr rawr rawr rawr rawr. Hilarious! Nico cracks up crazily at this video, it is so fun to see him laugh so hard.

We sent the drawing off to New York, NY yesterday. We printed out a US map so we could see how far away New York was.

Monday night was Financial Peace University. Guy stayed home with Nico and I went. They had a CAKE for us! The special thing about this cake is that it had a great big ZERO candle on it, signifying that we were OUT OF DEBT!

Allicia told me that she was so excited to hear the news about us paying off debt that she submitted our story through Dave Ramsey's website. It wasn't the fanfare she expected, but a message saying "We receive a lot of these, so listen to Dave's radio show to see if we mention yours!" Dave's radio show is 3 hours long every day, so I'm not sure that's practical, but if you happen to be listening, you might hear our story!

Monday night when I got home, Guy was reading "George's Marvelous Medicine" to Nico. This is a chapter book, and Nico was very interested. On Tuesday at school Nico chose a chapter book from the school library, one of the Magic Treehouse books. We've been kind of slow in reading that one, but the world of chapter books MIGHT be opening up to us. I'm not sure quite yet, but it certainly is exciting!

This week turned out to be a pretty good one despite the weekend illness. Here's to another great week! Love to you all!

Tonight. Bedtime for the banjos!

DEBT!

We are officially debt free! We paid our last debt payment yesterday.

Nico colored in the chart and asked "Are we going to move to a new house?" I told him that eventually we would.

Guy wasn't able to come on Monday night to Financial Peace University because of a fever. He has been struggling with colds for the past few months.

Last Friday we went to see GG! Because Nico is now in school all day, we didn't visit in the morning. Instead we drove over right after school. We scheduled our next visit for a Saturday and I think we'll try doing that from now on! This will also give Guy a chance to come with us! It was great to see her. She gave Nico one of her peaches and he loved it. She cut it up for him and he ate it while watching a show on tv. She loaded us up with pureed tomatoes and another thing of relish. We love to use those tomatoes for pizza sauce. Tomorrow I am making a roasted red pepper and tomato bisque soup and I cannot wait to see how different it will taste using her tomatoes.

Here's a picture of Nico and Aadam and Evelyn all playing together inside Aadam's room. Nico loves going inside their house.

I also wanted to take some time to record one of Nico's favorite ways to spend "You and Me Time". With me. He likes doing other things with Daddy during their You and Me Time, but with me this is his consistent choice. The Spring Fair consists of a green van, a green truck, and Thomas the train.

Thomas has a trailer that holds a sign that says "Spring Fair" on it.

The windmill and the sign are set up and then they dance while the light on the sign flashes. This is the way it always begins.

Then, while they are dancing, something happens. A helicopter will bring over an item and drop it right in front of them ...

... and then the rest of the time is spent interacting with that object. It's become a way for Nico to share things with these car characters and talk about some of his favorite things. After his birthday the helicopter brough legos. Conversations go like this: (these things are said by alternating cars)

Woah look there's a helicopter over there, it's carrying something really big. I wonder what it is?!
He's bringing it over here, watch out, he's dropping it!
WOAH! It looks like a book
Can you read, green van? Tell us what is says!
"Dot to dot book"
COOL!
Wait look the helicopter is coming back
Watch out it's dropping something!
AH!
Look it's a pencil!
I bet we use the pencil with the dot-to-dot book.
I love dot-to-dot books! Who wants to go first?

For a time the helicopter would drop a deck of cards and they'd play flap-jack or solitaire. It changes to include the latest interest that Nico has.

It's been such an interesting time where Nico gets to share something that he loves with three very excited cars that are super interested in whatever it is he drops in front of them. Friends that are excited about everything you show them are pretty sweet!

Today, the helicopter dropped a flashlight (recently acquired gift from Aadam and Sam) and when they opened up the flashlight they found it had a treasure map inside. So, they went on a treasure hunt into a dark cave.

Video of us "walking" home from school. Aadam is in front, the Evelyn, then Nico.