Board games, Book fair, first snow

The main house was empty this past weekend, as Jeff & Allicia and crew had gone out of town for a few days. On Saturday I headed up to the cabin again while the boys stayed home. I had a great time, and so did the boys!

Nico has been enjoying playing board games lately, so we have been playing a lot of Forbidden Island and Creationary. Guy and Nico do that together a lot, too. For "You and Me Time" Nico usually picks playing with cars, or aliens/Batman (toy figurines), because those are the thing that I usually wouldn't play with him at any other time. You and Me Time is special because he gets to choose what we do. hehe... Guy seems to favor playing games over playing cars and batman, too.

On Monday night, Guy and I played Forbidden Island with Jeff & Allicia. That is probably the 3rd "date night" we've all had together after the kids have gone to bed. You'd think for how long we've been living here (more than a year now!) we would have found more time than just 3 evenings to hang out and play board games. We're going to try to do that more often.

Tuesday morning we took another loop around the greenbelt. Before we even got started, Nico bumped his Strider bike into Evelyn's bike and Evelyn turned around and said: "Nico, if you do that again, then I am not going on this bike ride." After we were about 200 yards from the house, Nico bumped into the back of her again and Evelyn turned around and rode home. Nico came up to me and told me he wanted Evelyn to be there, so we went back to the house so Nico could apologize and ask Evelyn to join us. Nico told me it was an accident that he did it, so I told him to tell her that. But, Evelyn still did not want to come back. So, Evelyn stayed home.

Wednesday Nico came home with a Book Fair wishlist. Him and his two "study buddies" (from higher grades, not sure which), went to the book fair and Nico picked out 3 books he wanted and they wrote them down for him. I had already decided I was going to buy him 1 book, so today we left early for school and stopped in at the Book Fair. Nico's choices were all thick books about legos and star wars and ninjas, each with their own lego figurine. He chose the Ninja one.

A peak at the content

First snow happened this week! Not much, but, it was something.

Nico asks me every morning if it's going to be cold that day so that he knows what kind of clothes to wear. I always say "Yes" and he's started getting frustrated about it. I told him it's going to be cold for a long time and will probably get even colder than it is now!

We booked a cottage rental on the beach on Camano Island for our trip to Arlington next March. Take a look! https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/8488890

It's "cozy" but we are used to that! :) I am excited about Nico getting to be on the beach!

VIDEO!

G.G., The Loop

On Saturday Guy thought he was going to have to work but they gave him the day off because he was going to start the M-F schedule the next week. It was fun to spend the morning with him! Then Nico and I left to go to the Sensory Friendly movie, we met some of Nico's friends there (and my friend, the mom) from church. Lazarus, Leona (Nico calls her Lenoa) and Matthias, the mom is Elizabeth. The movie was Minions. Very cute! Afterward we came home and spent a pleasant afternoon/evening together. Guy had organized some of the clubhouse and it was great to see it looking a little less cluttered.

On Monday we took "the loop", which is our name for a loop on the greenbelt that takes us about 45 minutes. In the summer this loop is not practical because it is exposed and way too hot in the afternoons. But it is perfect in the fall and winter. If the sun is out it warms us up.

Avery

Allicia, Ivy, and Evelyn behind

Nico and Evelyn watching kids play on the Adam's school playground. When asked if it looked like fun to Evelyn (looking ahead to her kindergarten days next year) she said "No!" She seemed a little intimidated by all the noise.

Nico and Evelyn spend a lot of time arguing over who gets to be in the front. We're trying to work on all their conflict, they are like siblings sometimes. In fact, Nico calls Evelyn his sister sometimes, but also mentions on occasion that he is going to marry her.

They got so far ahead of us that they got to the crosswalk with the button you push that turns the light red and then you can cross. Evelyn pushed the button, and Nico went into auto pilot when the light turned red and the "walk" symbol showed up. So, they crossed a busy road far ahead of us. I ran after them and told them not to do that without us again. Then I got to thinking... how old does Nico have to be before he can walk to and from school by himself? he he. 

Tuesday was a full day. We needed the car so we dropped Guy off at work. Fred Meyer, then a visit to G.G. Nico wanted to bring his Creationary game where you draw a card from the pile and then put legos together to make it look like the picture on the card. So we each took turns. G.G. made a pretty impressive sheep! Nico also got to feed Scamper a dog biscuit, he loves doing that! Then he watched a bit of the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. 

After we left there, we went to a chiropractor appointment. We didn't know that Grandma Salisbury had an appointment there right before us, but we were pleasantly surprised to see her there! She was needing a ride back to Big-O Tires so it was serendipitous that we were there, and we were able to drive her back.

We went home for maybe 10 minutes, then it was time for school. I came into Nico's classroom that day to volunteer. I enjoy making copies and cutting out shapes, I did a lot of that, I also helped some kids with their classwork, and became more familiar with Ms. Lung's style of teaching and personality, which was really great. I plan to volunteer there once a month. 

After the school day was over, Nico and I both drove home. We had about an hour at home before leaving to go pick Guy up from work. We parked in the parking lot and waited for him and admired the really cool looking clouds hanging out on top of the mountains. 

We had home days on Wednesday and Thursday. 

At night Guy has been snuggling with Nico in his bed after reading books and all that, and Nico has been asking Guy questions about when Guy was little. Guy tells him a story, and then Nico tells a story sometimes about himself, but then asks again for Guy to tell him a story about when Guy was young or a baby. Last night Nico asked Guy to tell him about when Nico was a baby and used to poop in his diaper. 

At 6 PM every night we do homework. This includes reading sentences and words, and also saying words that the speech therapist gave us at the parent teacher conference. We are working on combination L sounds, like "flash" which is super hard for him because not only is there an L in the word (he just learned how to do these), the L is the 2nd letter in the word, which requires some tricks. And not only that, it has an SH at the end, which is also something he just learned how to do and doesn't always do it consistently. All those things he has to remember in this one word.

Homework takes us literally like 2-3 minutes. It's just a quick thing every day, to keep his skills up.

I think that's it for this week. Enjoy the Halloween video! There's a theme to the music, tell me if you can figure it out... Guy didn't figure it out, but then I didn't tell him there was a theme to it before he watched it.