Birthday Party, and Back to Normal after the Holiday.

Speaking of "Back to Normal after the Holiday", I was in Trader Joe's yesterday and was shocked to see they had wreaths and mistletoe out front for sale. For some reason it felt like Christmas was last week and was over, and I was shocked they were "still" selling Christmas stuff. Slow down, brain!

Gluten Week: Last Friday

Guy took Nico to The Griddle for breakfast. Nico ordered a hot chocolate and a waffle! This was the only time he complained of a tummy ache after eating gluten, and he said it was because of the syrup. I believe him! 

On Saturday we went to Fred Meyer to get a Christmas tree! Here's Nico trying on the Christmas glasses that make every twinkle light look like a reindeer.

 We listened to Christmas music and decorated the tree.

We found the Santa hat later, so he wore it while setting up one of our advent calendars.

Saturday night was a birthday party for one of Nico's friends from church, Lyam. He had his party at Pojo's. This was the first time in Nico's life he was able to eat the food and cake at a birthday party! Woah baby!

One of the birthday boy's brothers was playing a game and won the Monster Jackpot. Everyone took turns helping the tickets as they came out so they wouldn't end up in a huge pile. He won about 30,000 tickets!! It took more than an hour for all the tickets to come out.

Sunday after church we went to the Mall. Nico wanted to try a pretzel and cheese from the mall for his gluten that day. He also wanted his usual Great Steak and Potato meal, so we got both. He ate his meal and then opened up the pretzel. It was burnt! He took one bite and said, "Ick!".

Guy chose some New York Pizza for his lunch.

That was the last day of gluten for Nico. As far as we can tell he has had no reaction. We haven't discussed it yet, but it's very likely that even if the test comes back saying that he's sensitive, we will continue to let Nico eat gluten. Still, haven't talked about it yet so I can't say for sure, but that's the way I'm leaning. Go by the symptoms I say.

It has been a normal week back to school. Nothing on Monday, Cub Scouts on Tuesday, chess and youth group on Wednesday, hall monitor and drama club and band practice on Thursday.

On Sunday we started doing our online advent calendar we receive each year from Grandma Russell. Cute videos or games/activities every day. Nico and I have been fighting over who gets to play the solitaire-like game it has. Guy looked at it and said, "Looks like Spider Solitaire." I have never heard of that! But I bet that's what it is.

Speaking of spiders, I don't think I mentioned this last week, but we found a black widow inside our house by our front door. Ick! I killed it.

I didn't take as much video of gluten week as I thought I did, but here is the video anyway! I also included Thanksgiving snippets.

Dog Man, First Day of School, Pirate Party

Last Friday after lunch, Nico and I went first to Barnes and Noble so he could buy the latest DogMan novel. It had just been released that Tuesday, so there was a big display case inside the store that had a bunch of copies. 

Then we went to the mall to finish up his school shopping, and while we were standing in line at Kohl's, Guy texted me saying he was leaving work early. I called him and asked him if he wanted to meet us at the mall, and he said YES! So Nico and I waited for him arrive, then we all ventured to See's Candies first to get some treats, and then up to the food court to get lunch for Guy.

We also stopped by the game store and Nico found a used Switch game that he had been wanting, and so he bought it with his leftover birthday money.

When we got home I commissioned Nico to make a crock pot meal that he received all the ingredients for from a recent Grandma Camp. Seafood chowder! He happily dumped everything in there and turned it on. Dinner 3 hours later!

Saturday morning I did henna at the market. Allicia sent me this text while I was there. Avery needed some help with a toy and Nico was helping him.

Sunday was a fun day. Long morning at church and then I drove Nico straight to Big Al's where his cousins and Grandparents Salisbury were gathered to do some bowling. He came home that afternoon and went straight downstairs where there were kids waiting for him to play the Switch. Sunday, Jeff and Allicia had friends over for "Even Sunday", which is like "Odd Saturday" except they couldn't do it on Saturday and so they did it on Sunday. Guy ran a role-playing game for everyone. And Nico played the Switch until bedtime. This year we did not do a last-day-of-vacation treasure hunt like usual. Hmm.. oh well!

The first day of school arrived. 4th grade!

It was a half day, and after school he was invited downstairs to play some Switch, so he played until dinner time. We are still taking advantage of summer rules, not quite ready to crack down on video game playing. Nico and Allicia have been playing buddy-system on the Yoshi game, it was fun to watch them play together!

Nico has been playing Switch downstairs after school every day.

Nico's report after his first day of school was that he liked it and he liked his teacher. His teacher uses an app to communicate with parents, and she can also hand out points to students via the app and the parents can see which points she gave to their kids. Points for teamwork, participation, and good-job type stuff.

Tuesday night was the first Cub Scout Pack meeting of the season. It was a Pirate Party. Guy sent me these pictures telling me that they both got "Lucky Beard" as their pirate name.

Every morning before school Nico and I have been playing Monopoly. It's not the original version, I don't know what the version is called but instead of cash money it uses credit cards. The game goes a little faster that way. Usually we don't finish before school starts so we sometimes save the rest of the game for after school.

We have officially started looking for places to move. Today we went to see a house on Bacon street in this same neighborhood. We really liked it. We're trying to figure out if we can make it work, but we're hoping it's a GO for this one. But if not this one, we will keep on looking, it could be a while yet, it's really hard to say!

Crock Pot Meals, Rubik's Cube, and Horseback Riding!

Last Friday was the 2nd Grandma Camp day - the day the kids learned how to use a crock pot! I dropped Nico off at 8AM and he came home at 5:30 PM with a crock pot full of pot roast, potatoes and carrots. It was magnificent! And Nico made it. Nico was also required to clean the crock pot afterward, which he did diligently.

We had to rate it on a scale from 1-5. Nico gave it a 4. I would give it a 4.5. It was really good.

Saturday morning, after making pancakes, I packed up the car and drove to the downtown market to do some henna for the morning. Around 1 PM Guy and Nico hopped on their bikes and took the greenbelt all the way downtown to come see me right as I was closing up around 1:30. I gave Nico a henna tattoo and then we packed up my stuff and they helped me get it up the escalator before they headed home. 

Saturday night it was my turn to choose the movie while we ate pizza, we rented How to Train Your Dragon 3 from Red Box. Good movie!

Sunday was Father's Day. We celebrated by taking naps in the afternoon :) Sunday evening Nico became very interested in figuring out how to solve his Rubik's cube, so he got out a pad of paper and watched a YouTube video on how to do it. He took notes.

On Monday we were taking care of Avery and Ivy while Allicia and Evelyn were out of town. We took them to their VBS that morning and then Nico and I ran over to Urban Air (trampoline park) to use up one of his free passes. Nico solved the Rubik's cube while in the car that morning! 

We picked up the kids from VBS and came home for lunch. Allicia and Evelyn arrived home soon after.

Avery and Nico sat on our couch and talked about Pokemon for a while. 

Tuesday was another Grandma Camp, for this one they got to ride horses! They went to a farm where they showed all the kids how to approach a horse and pet a horse and ride a horse. Each one had their own handler, so while they sat on the horse, the handler held the reigns and they went for a trail ride.

Tuesday has typically been mine and Guy's date day. While Nico was in school, we would meet for an hour in the afternoon at a coffee shop. So this Tuesday we were able to resume that, and we decided to hit up a new restaurant (to us) in downtown Boise called Lemon Tree. They are a specialty sandwich shop, an they offer gluten free bread.

Guy got the Massaman Curry Bohn Mi, I got the Turkey Boursin. We both got a side of tomato soup. The tomato soup was perfect and the sandwich was even better. I have a new favorite local place to get gluten free lunch! We decided we should take Nico there sometime. They had outdoor seating and upstairs seating, we chose a spot inside on the main floor near the front window.

After lunch we walked around downtown. Guy got a coffee from a local shop we'd never been in before. He said the latte was really good.

And for a treat for me we went to The Chocolat Bar and got a truffle. We also went into a specialty gift store. From the outside we saw that they had a Tardis inside (from the show Dr Who), so we decided to venture inside.

They had photo ops for other shows too, including Star Trek. We also saw Archie McPhee's rubber chickens for sale! On the upstairs level I found a fun painting of the movie The Princess Bride. That movie was the movie Guy and I watched RIGHT before he asked me to be his girlfriend. So I bought it with some birthday money. 

It was the best afternoon ever.

After horseback riding, Nico and the crew went to the mall and ate lunch with my Aunt Liz, who is in town this week.

In the afternoon they once again went to the Pokemon League at the library, bringing Evelyn with them, and then they hit Pizza Pie Cafe for dinner.

Nico is graduating from Level 3 swimming lessons. After his last week of Level 3 next week, we are going to skip the rest of the summer and start up with swimming lessons Level 4 after he goes back to school. We plan to get a pass to the pool this summer and since he knows how to mostly swim now he is wanting to swim all the time.

Grandma Camp today was another crock pot meal!! Nico brought home a steaming hot crock pot full of chicken stew. Nico rated it a 5, Guy rated it a 2 (Chicken soup is not his thing, but he said it was a good chicken soup on the chicken soup scale), I would rate it a 4! 

After dinner we all headed to the church for band practice. I am playing piano this Sunday in the band so I was there to practice with them. It went late and we got home with enough time for Nico to clean his crock pot before he fell into bed. Zzzzz. He fell asleep fast. 

See you next week!

Birthday Parties, and Grandma Camp!

Last Friday was a busy day for us. Nico's friend from church, Reese, had a birthday party at Circustrix in Nampa. Lots of trampolines and foam pits to play in. Check out the video for a slow-motion jump! Nico did lots of flips.

After Circustrix we went to Reese's house for cake and presents. Reese's mom had made a gluten free pie for Nico's sake! She let us bring the rest of it home so Guy could have some too.

Friday evening was my brother Jonny's birthday party. His wife Alanna put it on and she did a wonderful job. It was Star Wars themed and I got a kick out of all the Star Wars names for the food, like "7 Leia Dip". Hah! They also had Star Wars episodes 4, 5, and 6 playing in various places around the house.

There were friends there that I hadn't seen in a while, and it was great catching up. Nico played with the kids that were there, including Lexie. He had a good time too and I barely saw him. The kids spent some time in the garage fighting with light sabers made from huge floppy foam cylinders, kind of like pool noodles but much thicker.

Saturday we had another birthday, Evelyn's! She had her party at her Aunt Julie's house. They live about a 2 minute drive from our house, in the same East End neighborhood. And they have a geothermal pool in their backyard! Check out the steam on the pool!

Whenever anyone would leave the pool and come back inside, you could see the steam rolling off of their skin.

After pool time was over, all the kiddos gathered inside and made their way to the huge windows in the living room that look into the back yard. Every year, as you might remember, we do fireworks on Evelyn's birthday. This year was no exception.

Then we had pizza, and opened presents and ate cake.

On Sunday, we made pizza! It was my turn to choose the movie, and I picked Big Hero 6. It was well-liked by all of us.

Monday we made sure to match our shirts. We wore the shirts that Grandma and Papa got us for Christmas. Nico and I headed over to my parents' house and Guy joined us later that evening for dinner. We ate good food and answered questions around the table. Nico was asked: "If you could choose any pet to get tomorrow, what would you get and what would you name it?" He said he would get a cat and name if Fluff McGuff. We also had interesting conversations about ants and tornadoes.

Tuesday, I left the boys at home and had a shopping day with my Mom at the mall. Yay! I got a text from Guy while we were there, telling me that Nico was very sad that Grandma Camp would be starting tomorrow instead of that day, and Nico wanted to know if he could stay over at Grandma's house a night early. Grandma said YES, so after we were done at the mall, Grandma Salisbury came and picked Nico up from our house and took him back with her.

Grandma Camp officially started the next day, Wednesday, when all the other kids arrived. And he's been having fun from what I hear! They went roller skating again, and though he didn't seem to like it last time they went, Lexie spent some time helping him skate and he has started to enjoy it. I also know they went to a new jump place called Altitude.

Various Grandma Camp pictures:

Now you can check out the video! Mostly from Circustrix, but also a shot of him skating.