Birthday and a Boo Bash!

Friday after school Nico and I went on an hour long bike ride on the greenbelt. Nico brought home an activity calendar from school and you can color in a star every time you spend 30 minutes exercising. If you fill in all the stars you get a free pass to Wahooz.

For dinner that night we made "Crabby Patties", Spongebob style. Nico even put onion and tomato on his burger because that's how you actually make one on the Spongebob show! Eating Crabby Patties while watching Spongebob, we thought it was appropriate :)

While we were over at Grandma and Papa's house last Tuesday, while Nico was home from school sick, he discovered a drawing book in their living room that Rory must have left there. He practiced drawing from it, and when we got home that afternoon he gave me cash so that I could purchase him a similar drawing book from Amazon. It arrived on Friday! Here he is drawing.

Saturday was Guy's birthday! We went to Touch-A-Truck in the morning. Nico got to sit in a lot of different kinds of trucks.

After that we went for a little walk on the greenbelt, we hit the post office and the library.

Nico wanted to catch a leaf that was falling from a tree. We found some trees that were dropping lots of leaves, and he caught one!

That evening we made pizza and watched Matilda downstairs in the basement because Jeff and Allicia and the kiddos were out of town. Then we cut Guy's birthday cake and ate a few pieces of that! If you remember, we were trying to get to the bottom of Nico's tummy aches. We went a few days without one, we pulled all sugar out of his diet. On Saturday night we let him have a piece of Guy's cake, and the tummy ache came back! So we know sugar is involved somehow!

On Tuesday we went to visit GG and Aunt Pat. Melody was there and Nico brought out the US map that he had brought with him and they looked at that together for a while.

After leaving GG's house, we stopped at the Farmstead. We met Guy there, and Jeff and Allicia and the kiddos. First stop was the huge inflatable monster maze. 

Then tonight was the Boo Bash at Nico's school. He is going to be a ninja again this year for Halloween. Yes this is the THIRD year Nico is wearing his ninja costume! That was quite a good investment! Not that it cost much.. he he.  Here he is walking with Ivy.

Nico won the cake walk on his first time. Apparently Evelyn won the cake walk on her first time, too. It was a strange coincidence. Nico picked out these purple spider web gluten free cupcakes. Evelyn picked out a spider cake! Evelyn was standing on #1, Nico was standing on #2. Not at the same time, they had to be in different rooms because the 3rd - 6th graders were separate.

It's tradition... eat some of the cake you won at the cake walk this very night!

That's it for this week!

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!

A huge sandwich, spider pizza, and Boo Bash!

Last weekend on Friday and Saturday Guy took care of Nico as I was at the "Women Ignite Idaho" conference and trade show. I had a henna booth at the trade show and was attending the conference. It was fun!

Guy made Pad Thai for himself and Nico on Friday night, and on Saturday they made a HUGE sandwich. They had been planning this for a few days, ever since Nico read one of his new Pete the Cat books that Grandma Russell sent him (thank you Grandma!!) He got a set of 5 Pete the Cat readers. And, he can read them! In one of the books, Pete the Cat builds this HUGE sandwich with all sorts of things on it. So Nico made a list of stuff he wanted on his sandwich. Not everything that Pete had, but things that Nico could eat.

Apparently Nico ate a few things from the sandwich for lunch, came back a few hours later and ate some more, a few hours later and finished it off.

Because of my day on Saturday, we had pizza on Sunday instead. We made spider pizzas with olives!

Nico's

Guy's (his salami is under the cheese)

On Saturday, Guy took Nico to the library and Nico picked out Shaun the Sheep on DVD and that's what we watched on Sunday while eating pizza. 

Tonight was the Boo Bash at Nico's school. We walked there with the whole crew. 

Guy had to be at the church at 6:30 and the Boo Bash was at 6. So we got in there quick and made sure to get our polaroid before Guy had to book it.

We left the Boo Bash at 7 PM and about 40 minutes of that was spent at the Cakewalk. Last year Nico won within 2 minutes, this year took a bit longer, but he persisted! They called his number and we hustled over the gluten free table and he picked out a chocolate bar. Yum! I have already agreed to let him eat half of it tomorrow after breakfast and the other half after lunch.

Next to Sammy at the Cakewalk

Waiting for the music to start

Some more pictures from this past week..

We finished the Star Destroyer!

It opens up!

Playing with leaves at Aadam and Sammy's house.

The Farmstead!

On Saturday we had a special day that started at the Sensory Friendly Movie that was showing Finding Dory. We took Evelyn with us, and Tiffanie and Aadam and Sammy also came with us. Afterward, Nico and I drove out to the Farmstead in Meridian to celebrate Bruce's birthday!! The Farmstead has a corn maze, hay rides, corn pits, and a bunch of other fun activities to do.

I lost track of Nico once and almost freaked out. He had taken his shoes off to go jump on the bouncy pad and I was talking to family and turned around and he wasn't on the bouncy pad anymore and his shoes were gone. Ack! We deployed the forces (my brothers) and the special forces (sisters in law and Grandma) and we went searching. Nico turned out to be at the attraction right next to the bouncy pad, which was the zip line. I looked over and he was ON one of the zip lines. I had a talk with him. But then an hour later I noticed him quietly leaving where he was and walking away from us and then running toward an attraction across the field. I ran after him and had another talk with him.

Nico, Bruce, Rory and Lexie

Check out the video below of Nico going down the slide with Bruce. It was a fun time, we were exhausted after! We came home and made our Saturday night pizza and discussed what we should watch while eating. Nico chose Penguins the movie.

Sunday Guy went early to church to practice doing the sound board. He has been going on Thursday nights during worship practice to learn how to do it. And this Sunday he watched while someone else did part of it, then he took over. He did a good job.

"No Spendtember" is over, so Nico and I took advantage of the two days off that he has and we went shopping today! We got him a Halloween costume, and a few other needed things from the store. Nico spent some of his money on some Grosseries (like garbage pail kids, but figurines, groceries that have molded over, like "Disgusting Mustard" which is a mustard bottle with green goop coming out the top).

After we got home he put the costume on and wanted to show Aadam and Sammy right away but they weren't home, so he sat on a stool reading the Rube Goldberg book outside in the driveway, waiting for them to return (he gave up before they did)

Then we had a treat and went to Boise Juice Company and tried their Pumpkin Smoothie bowl. It was so good! Nico also chose a fresh beet juice with carrots and apples, it was very tasty and he drank most of it. And he was convinced my pumpkin smoothie bowl was ice cream.

Then this afternoon he went over to Aadam and Sammy's house. They watched Hotel Transylvania 2. Tiffanie posted these two photos of them having fun:

That's pretty much it for this week.

Here's the video I told you about, Bruce and Nico going down the slide then Leah follows.