Friends, Wreaths, Gluten

I just read the title from my last post, "Assembling Furniture, Friends", sounds like we also assembled friends.

We received a big order of ribbon on Friday to process and ship to Amazon, which we did on Saturday (check out video at end of blog). On Saturday, Nico also dressed up in his Cub Scouts uniform and went door to door with Guy to sell wreaths. The Cub Scouts are doing a wreath fundraiser. He made 2 sales on his adventure. I think they plan to go again soon.

For pizza night on Saturday, it was Nico's movie choice, and he chose to watch a show called Oggy and the Cockroaches. It's a silly cartoon.

I got only ONE picture of Nico this week. Him and Grace are playing a game in this picture. Her and William came over on Sunday afternoon.

When Nico didn't want to play anymore he said, "Ok I'm done playing, you guys can go home now." Grace asked him why and he said, "I just want some alone time."

I have a sneaking suspicion that he was done playing because he was done taking turns on the Switch and wanted to play it all by himself. We all squeezed onto the couch after that (I say squeezed, because even though we have a big couch now, in this instance we all squished together just like old times in the Clubhouse), and we each did our own thing on our own devices.

Nico is enjoying Drama Club, he came home with this the other day:

Then I got an email from Nico's drama teacher telling us who got which roles in the play. They are doing an adaptation of The Wizard of Oz. Nico had requested to be the Wizard, and he got the part! He also plays Uncle Henry and one of the Munchkins. Evelyn's role is the witch. Can't wait to see them in the same play together.

Also, some interesting tidbits about Nico:

And in this one he mentions Clams as the best food. He had them for the first time in Portland this past summer. He has also been asking me to let him try sushi.

OH, speaking of food. A few weeks ago Nico told us that he asked God if he could have gluten, and God said Yes. So we're going through an investigative time that will be educational either way. We believe that God can speak even to kids (there's no junior Holy Spirit amiright), but we also know that our own desires can sound like God sometimes. So, we're going to try gluten. We've never been through a definitive gluten-reaction test with Nico before. In fact, we are not entirely sure WHAT his reaction is exactly. We just know that the tests show that he is very sensitive. The plan is to allow him to eat gluten for a week, Thanksgiving week, when he will be home. One gluten meal a day. Then we'll stop the gluten, and wait until his next doctor appointment in December to officially test him.

The night we told him this, he got so excited he had trouble sleeping. We spent a while listing restaurants and foods that he could try and he went bonkers after each one, especially when I told him we could go to Blue Sky Bagels. A few other ones we came up with - Pizza Hut, waffle cones from Baskin Robbins, Chick-Fil-A chicken nuggets, hot lunch at school (we may do this the following Monday when he goes back to school), pretzels from the mall, Olive Garden, biscuits and gravy, Belgian waffles, pancakes, and of course Thanksgiving things!

If anyone has other suggestions on what he should try, let us know! He woke up the next morning and asked, "What other restaurants can we go to that have gluten?" After school he asked the same thing. He is excited.

Okie dokie, I think that's it for this week! Next week we'll have a fun update about this upcoming weekend, tomorrow we venture to Ketchum, ID for the Trailing of the Sheep Festival to celebrate Guy's birthday!

So I'll leave you with a short video for now.

Assembling Furniture, Friends

In the unpacking we rediscovered the game called Munchkin. Nico is all about this game now. We play it before school, after school, after dinner, whenever someone says YES to his question: "Do you want to play Munchkin?"

Saturday was a good day. Nico's only chore was to empty a box in his room, but then he realized that one of my chores was to assemble the new shoe bench we ordered, and he begged me to let him do it. I said yes, of course, and so he assembled the shoe bench for me. The only thing I had to do was tighten a few of the screws all the way, the rest was him. We keep the shoe bench by our front door. It has been working out great, we have a place to sit to put shoes on now!

It was my movie choice that night, and I chose Singing in the Rain. It's a good movie that I hadn't seen in a while!

This past Monday we received the delivery of our new storage cabinet. It looks exactly like our other one, but we put this new one in the dining room to hold all our board games. Nico volunteered to put this one together too. It was a long journey; he asked me to take over for him after he put in an hour of hard work.

This is how he got all the pieces out of the box.

On Tuesday Nico arrived home from school in a car, his friend Grace had offered him a ride home with her mom. Grace and her little brother William were at his birthday party in July.

Nico walked in the door and said in really fast succession: "I invited Grace over today and she's going to come over with William and you just have to text her mom and let her know and then she can text you back and then Grace can come over."

Grace lives just down the street from us!

I texted her mom and then Grace and William came over a few minutes later. They are both very sweet kids. After all of them played in his room for a while, Nico and Grace separated off and started playing the Switch while William put together Nico's domino set in the living room. I really love these friends of his.

Tuesday evening was Cub Scouts. Guy is applying to become the secretary for the Cub Scouts council. They stayed late on Tuesday to stay for the council meeting even though he's not "officially" the secretary yet. He took notes just like a secretary is supposed to, and then emailed everyone the meeting minutes the next day. He is amazing. On a side note, he told me that before moving, he didn't feel like he had control over anything, and now, he has the power to change things and to affect his surroundings. His stress level is a lot better. He spent this past weekend cleaning out the shed and putting up shelving in there, mowing the lawn and trimming the roses. He says this house reminds him of his childhood. The floors, and the dim light in the living room in the evenings.

On Wednesday mornings, Grace's mom has started picking Nico up on their way to chess club, since Grace is in chess as well.

And Wednesday afternoons and evenings, Grandma Salisbury picks Nico up, then him and cousins and Grandparents go to dinner and then Youth Group. Afterward, Papa drops him off. It has been a fun tradition!

Today in Drama Club he got the script for the play they're doing, Wizard of Oz! He put in his request to play Oz, we will find out next week which role he got. Evelyn is also in class with him. It'll be fun to see them in a play together.

Nico has been really into National Geographic "Weird But True" books. He has been checking them out from the library at school. He brings up facts all the time, "Did you know that soap actually comes from underground? So it's impossible to wash your hands!" He used this line on me when I told him to wash his hands before dinner tonight.

That's it for this week!

Cub Scouts Camping, Train Ride, Sore Throat

The boys left for Baker City, Oregon last Friday afternoon for a Cub Scouts camping trip. It's a good thing they brought a huge comforter with them, because the nights were cold and Nico was having trouble. I'll let Guy blog for this part:

Left boise on time around 6pm. Led the pack early, but fell behind.  Near the turn off toward sumpter we were caught by a few other families and followed them to the Union Creek Campgrounds.  I helped Isabell put up her new tent, Nico then helped me put up our tent.  It was dark, and the ground was wet.  Got ready for bed, Nico was freezing, it was hard for him to focus.  I tried to zip our sleeping bags together, but I couldn’t figure it out and gave up.  It was good to have the comforter.

I awoke to a coyote alarm just before 6am (coyotes singing yelling etc)  Kids woke up and started playing tag. Nico stayed asleep in bed, when he woke up he wanted to leave immediately, (he was very cold) I told him we could leave after the train ride if he still wanted to. Before breakfast the kids went down to the lake, and Nico got a shoe stuck in mud.  We had to borrow a pair of shoes from Max, a kid a year younger than Nico, that we went camping with this summer (City of Rocks)

Breakfast was oatmeal.

Nico got his buddy (Max) and we all went on a nature walk to the lake, some avoiding mud.  We saw a frog, and an osprey carrying a fish. Later we saw an osprey hit the lake for some food.  Saw some rusty engines that had been in the lake at some point, but when the waters went down for the fall they were revealed.

Upon return, Nico and Max did dot to dots in the tent.  Lunch was walking tacos (taco stuff in a bag of chips).

We went to McEwan station, a small station where we got on our train to head into Sumpter.  The kids were given fake gold and fake money and necklaces.  There were some young girls on the train (not with the pack) who were telling stories of the dreaded rockodile which didn’t move during the day, but that would swim around at night and each children.  

The Rockodile

Also, that there were bandits in the area.  Our train was “attacked” by bandits, who forced the train to stop and they stole all the “money” from the children and took the “gold” from the head of the train.  We got into Sumpter station, where the kids were allowed to ride the bandit’s horses.

We then took a tour of the gold dredge, a giant boat / machine which was used to dredge huge amounts of soil for gold.  Nico and the kids also got to practice panning for gold. Nico found a few flakes, (we had to give them back).

We got back and the kids practiced their skits they made up for the campfire program that night (Saturday).  Dinner was chili, salad and rolls.  Nico was in several skits, including “night at the museum”, “Forest of Death” and another one he made himself involving preying mantises and leaves.

Another cold morning, Nico wanted to leave immediately. We stayed for breakfast and after a bit in front of the fire and sipping some hot chocolate he was ok waiting until all the other kids left.  Breakfast was eggs / sausage / and stuff potentially burritos.  Nico played around, I had done most of the packing up when he was relaxing at the fire.  Nico made some sandwiches for our trip home, then we left.  We stopped for a few snacks then drove straight home.

Ok it's me again (Joanna)! The first thing Nico wanted to do when he got home on Sunday was to open up his bath-bomb kit and start making bath bombs. He ordered this kit with his own money from a catalog we received in the mail. He also bought himself a dot-to-dot book.

He then dug into his Little Passports World Edition, where there was a 3D puzzle of Big Ben.

Monday afternoon I got a call from Nico's school and Nico was on the other end. He told me that he started getting a sore throat soon after getting to school that day, and then he got a stomach ache and a headache. The nurse told me he had been to her office 3 times that day and there was nothing else she could do for him. I picked him up and took him home. I loaded him up with all the good anti-virus things I have, and he happily ate nachos and watched his iPad and played on his Switch for the rest of the day. He had a low grade fever (100.1).

He stayed home on Tuesday. He spent all day on his iPad and Switch. Halfway through the day he said his sore throat was gone, and he no longer had a fever.

Wednesday was a full day for him. He goes to school early for Chess, and then after school he gets picked up for Youth Group. Papa picked him up. They went to Pizza Pie Cafe for dinner.

Guy and I usually make dinner for ourselves on Wednesday nights and then watch a show or two. This time we tried to get some unpacking done too, since that is an ever-present issue at the moment!

Thursday is a long day for Nico as well, he is at school early for his hall monitor shift, and at school late for Drama Club. Evelyn is in Drama Club with him this year. When he came home I asked him how the hall monitor thing went, and he said "Bad. Very very very bad." Then he smiled and said "just kidding!" Hah!

Here's a video of the Sumpter Train Ride!

Drama Performance!

We've had a pretty normal week this past week, the most exciting thing being Nico's drama performance this afternoon, which I'll talk about in a bit!

Saturday was a fun family day. Chores, then running errands. We wentto Fred Meyer and bought Nico some new shoes! Guy got some pretty nice ones as well and a pair of boots. He's been needing new shoes and boots for a while.

It was Guy's choice of movie for Saturday night, and he wanted to pick Mary Poppins Returns, but then he wanted to give Nico context for the movie so he decided to pick the original Mary Poppins. It was not available to rent on Amazon, and the library copies were all checked out. Thankfully, Allicia has the movie! We borrowed it from her. Nico really enjoyed it! I think I will pick Mary Poppins Returns this Saturday so we can complete the series.

Swimming, Cub Scouts, chess, swimming, then today was Nico's final day of drama class, and the play performance!

We walked over with Grandma Salisbury and Evelyn.
Check out the video to see him perform as The Lobster King! He really did great. He had a loud voice and enunciated quite well.

We've been getting veggie delivery boxes, which means, more veggies to eat! Kale chips were very yummy. Nico didn't care for them very much, but Guy and I sure did! We ate the entire bunch of kale that night (this picture is only 1/3 of them).

On Tuesdays we watch tv while eating. It's usually Three Stooges.

Here's Nico's performance! The first clip is separate and probably requires a back story. Nico was sad one night and went into his bed and put his head under his pillow. After a few minutes we saw a hand poke out to get a slice of cheese off his plate, and he brought it under the pillow with him so he could eat it. It was hilarious and Guy and I cracked up. He wanted to re-enact it on a video so I recorded it :)

Wahooz, Poems, Snow Travel, and Word Crimes

I was out of town until just yesterday. My plan was to return Monday but I got sick while away and couldn't drive home until Wednesday.

I asked Guy to tell me about last weekend. I transcribed his exact words below. For reference, on Saturday morning Guy took Evelyn with him to pick up Nico from the Grandparents' Salisbury house, where Nico had stayed overnight. He then took both Evelyn and Nico to Wahooz to use the tickets they won by finishing the workout challenge last year. Also, "Odd Saturday", which Guy mentions, is a tradition that Jeff and Allicia and family do on the 1st and 3rd Saturdays of every month. They invite friends over to play games and they eat dinner. We do not typically participate because Saturday is our pizza night.

It was snowing and pretty deep when we got there, I almost slid off the road, (but not in a scary way. In a very safe way). At Wahooz, the main attraction was the laser maze, which they went through several times to go avoid lasers. Then played some arcade games. Nico and I played Connect 4. And I won. And um then we tried bowling for a little bit but that didn't last very long. Evelyn wasn't interested. Then what they really wanted to do was play on the Ballocity which was like a giant play area with balls, but not like a ball pit but like a giant multi-story building that has tubes where you can shoot balls and they go in tubes and go all over the place. They disappeared in there for a while, running all over the place. Actually they were there the longest. Then it was time for us to grab our coats and go home, but Nico wanted to play on the spin-a-whirly game, like tilt-a-whirl. I thought he was going to get motion sick but he was all golden. Then when we got home, it was Odd Saturday, I played [games] and Nico watched a movie downstairs which turned into mostly rough-housing with Avery but for the most part they were having fun, and the adults were having fun. Sunday I don't remember what we did. Hey Nico what did we do on Sunday? Nico: Family Meeting. Guy: We did do a family meeting where we filled up my pills for the week. That was Nico's idea. The rest of the days were just kind of doing chores. We wrote poems. 

Here is Guy's poem:

He's a poet!

And here is Nico's (amazing!) poem: 

He took it to school with him to let his teacher read it, and she wrote that sweet note on the bottom. He then told me he has started writing Mrs. Kobe a poem that he's going to let her read when he's done. Here is the start of it:

We've got poets in the house!

Here are some pictures from Guy and Nico's time together: 

 Guy sent me this picture of Nico's perfectly square cheese, Nico insisted he wanted me to see it.

Nico spent the whole time I was away sleeping in our bed with Guy. Guy said Nico is a tornado.

On Sunday they went to see The Lego Movie 2 in the theaters after church. They were giving out these Lego sets! I'm sure they got popcorn and water too. On Sunday they also saw a Downy Woodpecker on the tree out front.

Tuesday, Nico and I were supposed to visit GG, but since I was still in Redding, Guy said he could take Nico. Allicia is out of town at the moment, too, so I was going to be watching the kids this week after school. But on Tuesday I was just going to be watching Evelyn, by taking her with us to GG's house. So, Guy and Nico and Evelyn all went together! They played Jumanji and Evelyn and Guy tied. Afterward, they hit up Jimmy John's.

Wednesday was my travel day home. I woke up in Redding with several inches of snow on the ground and no power at the hotel. I packed up all my belongings with a head lamp on, and dug my car out.

I put chains on my car before leaving the parking lot. I was so grateful for my "mountain training" when I lived with my parents before Guy and I were married. It helped me more than once on this trip - 1st in getting my chains on, and 2nd in not freaking out driving on snow-covered roads with my chains on. I had a lot of people praying me home. 

As I was climbing the mountain of that first pass, I came to a bridge where there were 3 semi trucks stuck in the snow, with just enough space between them for cars to weave through. A police trooper stopped me before I passed the 3rd one, I rolled down my window and he told me if possible that I should turn around and not go any further, that the roads would only get worse from there "They have two feet of snow in Burney!" I imagined plowing through 2 feet of snow with my car. I told him I was still going to go. He told me to make sure I had extra water, a flashlight, and extra blankets, I told him I did. I saw him glance at my front tire for chains and then he waved me on.

About an hour into the trip, after I was over that pass, the chain on my left front tire broke. I had to take both chains off at that point. Thankfully, I was only 7 miles from the nearest town (Burney), and there was no longer snow on the road but just wet cement and a bit of slush. My mom directed me to the nearest Les Schwab, where I got studless snow tires for my car and another set of chains. The 2 feet of snow in Burney was true, but it wasn't on the road. They had piled it all in the middle, it was an easy town to maneuver through and they were well prepared for visitors. The ground was wet, there was no ice anywhere. I didn't have to use chains again! I went over several more passes but there was just sporadic slush. The snow plows kept the road pretty clear. It was a miracle in my opinion, after seeing the reports that the roads would be terrible. The wet roads were steaming themselves dry in front of me.

I arrived in Boise at 9:15 PM, and pulled up to the house to see both my boys outside in the pouring rain, waiting for me to arrive. They gave me a big hug and then helped me unload my car.

It's good to be home!

Here's a picture from today watching the kids after school. Guy came home early to help me out, since I'm still not 100% recovered.

Nico reading DogMan to Avery and Ivy.

All the kids had Valentine's parties today at school, Ivy came home wearing all pink and eating a pink heart sucker.

Nico's Valentine from his teacher was in his planner:

I got an email late last night from Nico's drama club teacher, they have assigned roles in the play they're doing! Nico was assigned the role of King Lobster. He is in Act 2, Scene 2, and then he plays  a different character (one of the sharks) in a later scene. Here's a shot of some of his lines:

There are two full pages like this one, plus another half a page, with his lines scattered like seen here. That's a good amount! Then he's got 3 lines as a shark. The total play is 18 pages long. I think there are 15 kids in his class. His performance is on April 11th, all are invited to come!! If you need specifics let me know!

Tonight Nico is contemplating writing a comic about "Word Crimes", based on a Weird Al video that Guy showed him called Word Crimes. Nico and I watched it tonight and we paused the video every so often so that I could explain what each word crime was (for example, using an apostrophe incorrectly). Then we read Captain Underpants so that I could point out every single word crime. We found about 15 word crimes in the first 2 pages. Captain Underpants is the best book for misspelled words and grammar problems. 

He has asked me to write him a story that has lots of word crimes in it, so I'm going to go do that now. Until next week!

Soap Carving, Auditory Testing, Sleepover!

Last Friday, Nico pulled out his pocket knife and started carving his soap figure for Cub Scouts. He decided on a horse.

For Saturday movie night, Nico chose Ferdinand as the movie to watch. We couldn't find it available to rent on Amazon Prime, but we did see that it was available at the RedBox at M&W Market. So Nico and I walked over there to rent it. As we were leaving I hear someone yell, "Joanna!" and it's Guy, he had stopped at M&W to get gas after he was done running errands, so we rode home with him.

Ferdinand is a VERY good movie. And the pizza, was VERY good.

Earlier on Saturday Nico and I completed his shelf by adding book ends, a pencil holder, and wrapping the edges with a bumper so that he wouldn't bonk his head at night. Here's how it looks!

On Sunday we celebrated Papa's birthday at Smokey Mountain Pizza. I can't believe I got NO pictures from it! But it was fun, Nico and Lexie played games in the arcade, and it was fun to get together, have some food, eat some cake, and celebrate PA!

Bright and early Monday morning was Nico's Auditory Processing testing. We drove out to Amity Elementary school to meet with the audiologist. She remembers Nico from Madison Elementary, where she had come to test all the kiddos' hearing. 

Nico went into a soundproof room, and the audiologist went into a different one that was connected by a window they could see each other through. I couldn't hear what they were saying to each other, but I did have a pair of headphones next to me that let me hear what Nico was hearing.  He had to go through a gamut of testing.

He had to pick out what someone was saying in one ear, with background noise coming in to the other. He had to identify "High" or "Low" for a series of tones, repeat words that were said in one ear, at the same time as a different word in the other ear. "Which word did you hear in your left ear?"

She said this kind of testing can be hard on kids and that they often take breaks, and indeed we did. Nico needed two breaks. The first one, she came out of her room first and said, "That last one was hard on him so we're going to take a break." He was discouraged that he couldn't get them all right and it was really getting him down. She told us while we were on the break that from what she was seeing that he's actually doing better than most kids his age. That seemed to cheer him up a bit.

The final report was what she had reported earlier - that for all the tests he did, overall he was testing better than kids his age. This means he has NO auditory issues! 

The only somewhat "off" thing is the reflexes in his left ear. Like you can test your knee reflexes by hitting them, they test ear reflexes by sending sound into the ear and measuring the reflex response. She said that the reflexes in his left ear are not quite what they should be. 

Alos, throughout the testing she saw that he favored his right ear and could generally understand things better when heard through his right ear. She said typically kids tend to favor their right ear. The language center is on the left side of the brain, and when someone hears something in their right ear it goes straight to the left side of the brain, so the response is quick. When something comes in through the left ear, it goes straight to the right side of the brain, so in order to get to the language center it has to cross the hemisphere over to the left, which takes a bit longer and is more pronounced in children.

I think they're mostly done with all the testing at school, and we'll talk about the results in a few weeks at another meeting.

On Tuesday, Guy took Nico to Cub Scouts only to find out they weren't meeting that night. Doh!

Wednesday morning I left on a trip and am still there - in Northern California at a conference. I will return home next Monday.

Nico stayed with Guy Wednesday, and today my Mom picked him up from school after Drama Club. Nico wanted to show her his classroom, so he took her in there, and his teacher was still there, so she was able to meet his teacher. Grandma said she was sweet and that she loves Nico.

Bruce and Rory are also staying the night tonight at Papa's and Grandma's. Mom sent me a picture of a snack bar she made for everyone tonight that was a hit! 

And here is Pa reading to Nico before bed. From here it looks like a Richard Scarry book!

Ok that's it for this week!