Wahooz, Treasure Hunt, Eclipse, School!

Guy stayed home from work last Friday because I had to be at my henna event very early. Him and Nico went to Wahooz and played miniature golf! Guy sent me a picture after they were back at home:

And here's me and my crew at the Uplift Festival

Monday was a fun filled day. It was the last day of summer vacation, and according to tradition this requires a treasure hunt. Evelyn and family were out of town, and Aadam and Sam no longer live here, so I did a treasure hunt just for Nico. In the video at the bottom of this entry you can see part of it, the part where he returns from running around the block to find his map. For the treasure I bought him a comic book. He was a little skeptical, and instead chose to play Rush Hour.

It's a game which he found while searching for the treasure. He forgot he had the game. Since then, he has played it every single day, trying to get through all of the cards.  You set up the board with cars and then you move them around to try to get the red car out. He is very very good at it! We are missing a few cars so he has used micromachines in their place, no biggie.

Then we had a trip to the gym, followed by the eclipse! We had eclipse glasses given to us by Allicia, who had a few extra. We sent one pair with Guy to work, and we had two at home. The video at the end shows some of our eclipse experience.

Tuesday was the first day of school! Evelyn and family were still out of town, so we walked to school just the two of us and we went into his classroom. He has his old kindergarten teacher, who has moved up to 2nd grade. She told me that teaching 2nd grade is her dream job. She is very happy with it, and Nico was happy to have her as a teacher again.

We started walking with Evelyn on Wednesday, and I've been teaching them how to look for cars so that they can start walking to/from school together by themselves. We're almost there.. they chose a spot to meet after the bell rings so that they can find each other to walk home.

Last night we lost power for about 2 hours. And tonight we have a thunder storm and SO much rain! A power outage and a thunderstorm are both very good reasons to not go to bed. Or so I've heard. ;)

Here's the video!

Buses, Friends, and Candles

We had some extended family in town this past week for a wedding, and Nico and I got to see some Aunts and Uncles briefly on Sunday after church. On Monday, my Aunt Mary came over with my Mom to say hello for a little while. It was great to see everyone!

On Tuesday we went to see G.G. in Nampa. She gave us more bounty from her garden. Yum! The next time we go to Nampa to see her it will be a Monday because Nico will be in preschool Tuesday through Friday. PRESCHOOL!

Preschool starts next Wednesday, 6 more days! I can't believe it. We got Nico's bus schedule in the mail yesterday. On Monday while my Mom and Aunt were over, we saw the school bus drive by and stop in front of our house for half a minute or so. I knew she would be doing this to get her route down, but it was neat to see it. It made it all the more real! And then of course, getting his official pickup/dropoff times in the mail made it even MORE real. He will be picked up at 8:35 AM and dropped off at 12:29 PM. Four whole hours he will be gone! It is hard to believe. He won't be taking the bus his first day, we are going to ease into that. I think my Mom and I are going to drop him off in the morning and head over to Target to do some shopping, to distract me from the fact that Nico won't be with me :) Shopping is a great distraction technique!

Next Tuesday is the open house where he will meet his teacher and get to show him around the school. I am looking forward to that.

We got a package today with a backpack in it for Nico - a gift from the Grandparents Salisbury! He chose one that had a car on it. While Guy was leaving for work, Nico noticed he had his bag around his shoulder, which Nico called a backpack (buckabuh). He said "Two buckabuh! Cah buckabuh. Daddy buckabuh." A nice story from Nico - he saw two backpacks. His own car backpack and Daddy's backpack. On our walk tonight he also was talking about puddles (putteh), and told me that the pickup went through a puddle (puckabuh putteh).

Nico wearing his new backpack.

We spent this morning with Evie. We went to see the little family and then took Evie with us for another lunch date. We went to Memorial park and then to the Co-op. A good lesson in handling two kids in a grocery store! It wasn't that bad, as they are both very well behaved. We even went potty in the Co-op. Then we went back home and ate lunch. Evie told me "I'm ready to go home now." after playing for a while after lunch. It was the exact time we were going to leave anyway, so I said "Ok, let's go!" Nico then took a two hour nap. In the video you can see how they typically interact when together. Evie is good at picking up the words Nico says and repeating them back to him. When Nico would say "tickie" for train, Evie would say "Where is the tickie? Where do you see it?"

Tonight we had a flash thunderstorm. We didn't lose our electricity, but I had a sudden urge to do a "candle factory". We used to do these when we were little whenever the lights would go out due to a thunderstorm. Pull all your candles out and light them, then play with the wax on aluminum foil spread over the kitchen table. Playing safely with fire is a good skill to have :) Nico is likely a little too young for this, so we did a slightly modified version of it. We just lit the candles and held them and then blowed them out, and poured some wax onto the foil. Nico loved blowing out the candles. Blowing is an excellent skill to have for speech development. I also had an urge to make some hot chocolate, but we weren't able to do that. An hour later the sun was back out, so we went for a Strider ride. When we came home, our landlord was on our roof cleaning up all the dead and broken branches. Wind storms can really tear up the trees!

Candle Factory. Yes, this is exactly where Nico burnt his finger.

VIDEO: Evie and Nico Snippets