Mother's Day, and Pokemon

On Friday after school, Nico's teacher texted me this picture and said Happy Mother's Day, she also said "I love this boy!" I sure do, to!

Saturday was a laid back day. We labeled some more product to ship to Amazon, and the main house had "Odd Saturday" again, where they invite friends over for games and food. Nico and Guy have been participating in that when it happens. Then they cut out early so we can make pizza. My movie choice was "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day". It reminded me a lot of the Wimpy Kid movies, funny. It has Steve Carell in it.

Sunday Nico let me open the gift he had brought home from school on Friday. He joked that I had to wait until after church, but I convinced him to let me open it before church. It was a clay plate in the shape of his hand. I love it! I put it on the kitchen windowsill.

At church they had a photo booth for mothers and children for Mother's Day. Here's ours.

Swimming lessons on Monday. His class is much bigger this time.

On Tuesday we tried something new. We went to the Pokemon League at the library after school. They had a bunch of tables set up with mats to play Pokemon on and a bunch of Pokemon decks available to play with if you don't have your own. In the picture, Nico is playing with one of the facilitators. The rest of the kids you can see off to the right on the floor, they're going through their binders of Pokemon cards and trading them with each other. Nico didn't bring his binder, so he didn't participate. He will next time! If Nico signs up to be a "Pokemon Trainer" online, then he'll get free prizes for coming to the club at the library. We will do that! Nico and I, and Nico and Guy have been playing Pokemon at home this past week. He also brings his Pokemon bin (which holds all his decks for playing) over to Merek's house sometimes when he visits.

That evening, Nico didn't have Cub Scouts, so Guy and Nico were able to come with me to Liz's graduation (Bruce & Rory's mom). She graduated from U of I with her Bachelors. It was exciting to see!! We sat next to Papa and Grandma Salisbury, and Bruce and Rory.

Walking back from the graduation to the parking garage. Guy found some coffee at the reception so he grabbed some. Nico went for some chamomile tea.

On Wednesday I sent Nico to swimming lessons with... a bath mat. It did not do a very good job of drying him off. It was way too small. Oops. At least he's smiling. Guy sent me this picture and "Towel too small".

Today Nico had a field trip. His whole class rode the city bus downtown. Nico has been researching the US Bank building, and his classmates are all researching downtown buildings too, so they took a walking tour of downtown Boise all day today. They stopped at the Grove plaza to eat lunch. It was a mix of rain and sun, so I sent a hat and an umbrella with him. They were supposed to catch the bus back to school, but they MISSED it! The class walked all the way back to Adams from downtown. Wowza! Lots of exercise today.

I asked him to tell me a story about today:

"We went to the Zion bank and we went to the US Bank." Cool what did you guys do there? "We just looked at it and then we, the only place we went inside was Zions bank because it's really famous because it's the tallest building in Idaho."

I called the landlord of the house across the street, and she said she still hasn't heard anything about their specific move out date. She told me their lease is up at the end of June, and then she will spend the next month painting. I told her we're willing to wait for it, so she asked me a little more about us. I told her where we're living now, and that Nico is going to Adams and we'd like to stay in the district. She mentioned the rent would probably be going up (out of our price range), but she said nothing has been decided yet and to call her in the middle of June. Currently lawn care is included in rent, so I asked if she'd be willing to drop the rent if we took care of the yard and she said the owners have had bad experiences with letting tenants do that in the past. I'm hoping they will make an exception for us, but I'll wait until June to touch base with her again and talk about all that.

Still hoping beyond hope!

Christmas and Grandparents Russell!

Late last Thursday night, after I was done updating the blog, I noticed I had a fever! It looked like I had caught whatever Guy and/or Nico had! I laid low the next few days. Friday morning Guy sent Nico off to school and then we welcomed the Grandparents Russell into town! Nico had an early release and Grandma Russell went to meet him. Nico opened a few presents that day, and I slept into the afternoon while the boys went up to the suite where Grandpa and Grandma were staying. They went to Fresh Healthy Cafe for dinner and brought me home a juice. It was yummy!

Guy putting together his hurdy gurdy.

Nico opening his Little Passports: World Edition from the Grandparents Russell.

Hanging out upstairs playing Life with Grandma

Saturday I was feeling mostly better. Guy made pancakes for everyone and we started our day. We had originally planned to see a movie on Saturday but we decided against it. We made Crabby Patties for lunch so the grandparents could experience them, and for dinner that night we made PIZZA and watched "I Want a Dog for Christmas, Charlie Brown". We brought a computer monitor upstairs so we could watch the movie in the suite while we ate our pizza.

Sunday morning, Guy had to be at the church at 6:45AM for play practice. Nico and I had to be there at 8AM. Practice went well, and the bell choir opened the play at 10:30.

GG was able to join us at church that morning, and after church we came back home and ate Jimmy Johns for lunch, then exchanged gifts with GG.

Presents from GG

Cup Stacking!

Monday the boys hung out with the Grandparents Russell while I worked for a few hours on Audio Pile stuff at my parents' house. I was able to give them their gift and say Merry Christmas!

Guy, Nico, and the Grandparents Russell went to Barnes & Noble that day and spent a gift certificate we had. Guy brought home for me a Nano Blocks lego (my favorite!) and some Fuji water (my favorite!). Nico got a few things too (wish I could remember what!)

Monday night was the Christmas Eve service at church. Guy and I had to be there at 3:45 PM. Guy was running sound and I had a piano solo. It went well! That night after coming home and putting Nico to bed, it was time to finish wrapping the rest of the gifts. We pulled out Nico's big gift from the garage and wrapped that up, and Guy had to carefully get the stockings down that were hanging above Nico's bed. Guy filled his stocking and then carefully hung it back above Nico's bed.

Christmas morning Nico was up about 6AM and he opened his stocking. I also let him open the gift that Jeff & Allicia had left for us outside our door. It was a lego that he put together right then. We ate breakfast then - cinnamon rolls, bacon, and eggs. After that, we opened presents!

Robot shirts from Pa and Grandma Salisbury!

Grandma took Nico to the park that afternoon to try out his new scooter.

We had a chicken dinner that night with rice and broccoli, and brought the computer monitor upstairs again to watch some Christmas shorts that Guy had grown up watching. We had poppers that we popped before our dinner so we could put our paper hats on. Looks like I didn't catch any pictures of that. Each popper also had a small toy plus a Christmas joke in it.

That evening we went to the Winter Garden Aglow.

We went into the gift shop while we were there, and Nico got a pair of glasses that turns all the lights into reindeers. We each took turns looking at the Cross through the glasses. It turns the Cross into a huge reindeer face.

We said goodbye to the Grandparents Russell the next morning, they had an early flight back. The time just flew by, we really enjoyed their visit.

I worked on Wednesday and Guy took Nico for a several-hour trip to the library. They had a pretend ice-cream stand set up and Nico "worked" there for almost 3 hours. Guy had plenty to do, too, they apparently had a sticker poster on one of the tables that Guy worked on.

Thursday morning we realized that the internet wasn't working. Apparently Centurylink had a nationwide outage and a lot of people were without internet. This morning, we're back in business! Yay!

I've separated the videos into two different ones, since it was easier that way. The first one is a compilation of videos that Grandma Russell took, the second one is made up of videos that I took, plus one thrown in there that Grandpa Russell took. 

Grandparents Russell, G.G., and a Christmas Miracle!

On Friday the snow started!! The Grandparents Russell came over and hung out for a bit, we popped popcorn and went downstairs to watch a movie. They weren't able to stay long that day because of the snow, but I think we packed some fun in.

The basement downstairs. Jeff & Allicia were out of town so we had free range of the house!

Saturday we woke up to more snow! We dug our car out and put chains on it and went to G.G.'s house where we opened presents and ate lunch.

We headed back around 2 PM, Guy needed to be at the church at 3:30 because he was doing sound for the Christmas Eve service. Nico and I picked Brianna up and we all went to the Service together. It was a lovely service and Nico kept asking when it was time to go to bed because he wanted to wake up on Christmas!

We had a bit of a Christmas miracle with one of Nico's presents. He had asked Santa for a box of 50 Hot Wheels cars and he told me Friday morning that he was so excited that Santa was bringing him a box of cars. I tried telling him that Santa may not bring him all the gifts he asked for. We've also told him the truth about Santa every year, but he really doesn't want to believe us. Anyway, we did NOT get him a box of 50 Hot Wheels cars and I was feeling kind of sad that he was expecting it from Santa. So, on to the Christmas miracle...

Guy was downstairs in the cellar looking for the chess pieces for the chess board we had pulled out, when he came across a taped up shoe box. He opened it up and it was PACKED full of Hot Wheels! We brought it upstairs and joked, "Wouldn't it be funny if there were exactly 50 cars in here" Well, guess what? There were exactly 50.

We wrapped it up from Santa and when Nico opened it he had no idea that he used to own all of those cars, they were like brand new to him. This was by far the present he played with the most on Christmas morning. He was so excited about all his cars that he wanted me to set up my video camera and make a video of him showing off his cars, and then send it to everyone in the world. I figured YouTube was close enough to sending it to everyone in the world, so that's what I did. The video is 40 minutes long so I decided to cut it into 5 minute segments. Not sure I'll ever post more than Part 1 though. I posted it and he was happy :) You can see the 5 minute Part 1 at the end of this entry.

Sunday morning was fun. Christmas! Nico set the alarm for 6 AM because that's when he wanted to wake up, but, nope, he was up at 4:30!! We laid in bed and sang Christmas carols for 30 minutes until 5 AM, when Nico and I got up and he looked at all his presents under the tree, then opened his stocking.

The chess board my brother Jonny got for me many years ago, it is etched out of marble! We told Nico where it came from and that we pulled it out on Christmas because we knew he wanted to play.

I made cinnamon rolls for breakfast, tradition from when I was younger! They were super yummy.

Before adding the glaze

After breakfast we opened gifts!

Playing with his cars

Sunday afternoon the Grandparents Russell came over again and played with us. Grandma and Nico spent a lot of time playing the Bird Matching game that they got him, he loves that game. You match the female bird with the male bird.

We now have an Echo Dot in our house, thank you Grandparents Russell! You can talk to this device, her name is Alexa, and it is linked to our Amazon Prime account. We can ask her to set timers, tell jokes, play music, and she even knew the answer to a joke that Nico told her. The most brilliant use of it so far has been in the playing of music. Because we have Amazon Prime we can listen to streaming music for free, so Nico tells her to play his favorite band (Capital Kings) and she puts all their songs on shuffle, and then he dances. Tonight over dinner Nico asked her to play dinner music, and she chose a latin music station. heehee.

Oh, the point where the Echo Dot and the Bird Matching game connect - We right away started using the Echo Dot to play lullaby music at night for Nico to fall asleep to. One of the songs that first night was one that Guy recognized. It's called Australian Lullaby, it's about a Kookaburra. Nico made the connection that kookaburra was one of the birds in the matching game. Now every night we listen to Australian Lullaby on repeat while he falls asleep. It's a pleasant song, there are no words in the version we listen to, it is just piano.

We finished up on Sunday watching Elf downstairs while eating popcorn. It was a very nice visit and putting together the video tonight has made me already miss them! Can't wait to see them again!

Sunday evening after we said goodbye to the Grandparents Russell, Guy put a log on the fire and we sat in the living room to read the Christmas story from the Bible. (Eek - forgot to do that in the morning!)

Sunday afternoon we were also planning on seeing the Grandparents Salisbury, but they got SNOWED IN! They had SO much snow they couldn't get out! It was definitely a white christmas this year! But we did get to see Papa on Monday when he stopped by!

When cleaning up today I found a piece of paper that I had recorded one of Nico's prayers on.

Prayer that Nico prayed Dec 3rd, 2016:

"Dear Jesus, I pray you heal Daddy while he's sleeping, and I pray you heal me, too, because my tummy really hurts. It's a job only for God. And Thank you for my parents. In Jesus' name, Amen."

It's a job only for God! :) God has answered our prayers for Nico's tummy healing. He is getting better and better and better. Some of his health issues are resolving. Food is still restricted, and it may always be that way for him (gluten, sugar), but he has come a long way in only a few months. Praise God!

VIDEOS!

Christmas Tree

On Friday we got a visit from the Grandparents Salisbury, they brought Christmas presents, and so, we opened them early! I don't think Nico's would have fit under the tree anyway :)

He loves this chair! He has since discovered a better way to sit in it and I will get a picture of that soon. It also folds up and is easily tucked away. Thank you to Grandparents Salisbury!

Saturday we bought our Christmas tree!

Nico pointed out his name and date on the back of one of them. Every year, the Grandparents Russell give Nico a new ornament. Nico was very excited to rediscover this, and the next morning for You and Me Time we spent our 10 minutes finding all of the ornaments from them and saying them in order by year.

We also pulled out the trusty lego advent set and he put them all together and arranged them by day.

This morning, being the very first day of December, means that we got to do our advent calendars. We got our yearly computer-based advent calendar from Grandma Russell (thank you!) which we booted up today. Nico decorated the tree and we watched the Dec 1st animation.

He chose to purchase the Pokemon Handbook from the school book fair. He is excited about that. 

That's about it for this week! On to the next!