Wahooz, Poems, Snow Travel, and Word Crimes

I was out of town until just yesterday. My plan was to return Monday but I got sick while away and couldn't drive home until Wednesday.

I asked Guy to tell me about last weekend. I transcribed his exact words below. For reference, on Saturday morning Guy took Evelyn with him to pick up Nico from the Grandparents' Salisbury house, where Nico had stayed overnight. He then took both Evelyn and Nico to Wahooz to use the tickets they won by finishing the workout challenge last year. Also, "Odd Saturday", which Guy mentions, is a tradition that Jeff and Allicia and family do on the 1st and 3rd Saturdays of every month. They invite friends over to play games and they eat dinner. We do not typically participate because Saturday is our pizza night.

It was snowing and pretty deep when we got there, I almost slid off the road, (but not in a scary way. In a very safe way). At Wahooz, the main attraction was the laser maze, which they went through several times to go avoid lasers. Then played some arcade games. Nico and I played Connect 4. And I won. And um then we tried bowling for a little bit but that didn't last very long. Evelyn wasn't interested. Then what they really wanted to do was play on the Ballocity which was like a giant play area with balls, but not like a ball pit but like a giant multi-story building that has tubes where you can shoot balls and they go in tubes and go all over the place. They disappeared in there for a while, running all over the place. Actually they were there the longest. Then it was time for us to grab our coats and go home, but Nico wanted to play on the spin-a-whirly game, like tilt-a-whirl. I thought he was going to get motion sick but he was all golden. Then when we got home, it was Odd Saturday, I played [games] and Nico watched a movie downstairs which turned into mostly rough-housing with Avery but for the most part they were having fun, and the adults were having fun. Sunday I don't remember what we did. Hey Nico what did we do on Sunday? Nico: Family Meeting. Guy: We did do a family meeting where we filled up my pills for the week. That was Nico's idea. The rest of the days were just kind of doing chores. We wrote poems. 

Here is Guy's poem:

He's a poet!

And here is Nico's (amazing!) poem: 

He took it to school with him to let his teacher read it, and she wrote that sweet note on the bottom. He then told me he has started writing Mrs. Kobe a poem that he's going to let her read when he's done. Here is the start of it:

We've got poets in the house!

Here are some pictures from Guy and Nico's time together: 

 Guy sent me this picture of Nico's perfectly square cheese, Nico insisted he wanted me to see it.

Nico spent the whole time I was away sleeping in our bed with Guy. Guy said Nico is a tornado.

On Sunday they went to see The Lego Movie 2 in the theaters after church. They were giving out these Lego sets! I'm sure they got popcorn and water too. On Sunday they also saw a Downy Woodpecker on the tree out front.

Tuesday, Nico and I were supposed to visit GG, but since I was still in Redding, Guy said he could take Nico. Allicia is out of town at the moment, too, so I was going to be watching the kids this week after school. But on Tuesday I was just going to be watching Evelyn, by taking her with us to GG's house. So, Guy and Nico and Evelyn all went together! They played Jumanji and Evelyn and Guy tied. Afterward, they hit up Jimmy John's.

Wednesday was my travel day home. I woke up in Redding with several inches of snow on the ground and no power at the hotel. I packed up all my belongings with a head lamp on, and dug my car out.

I put chains on my car before leaving the parking lot. I was so grateful for my "mountain training" when I lived with my parents before Guy and I were married. It helped me more than once on this trip - 1st in getting my chains on, and 2nd in not freaking out driving on snow-covered roads with my chains on. I had a lot of people praying me home. 

As I was climbing the mountain of that first pass, I came to a bridge where there were 3 semi trucks stuck in the snow, with just enough space between them for cars to weave through. A police trooper stopped me before I passed the 3rd one, I rolled down my window and he told me if possible that I should turn around and not go any further, that the roads would only get worse from there "They have two feet of snow in Burney!" I imagined plowing through 2 feet of snow with my car. I told him I was still going to go. He told me to make sure I had extra water, a flashlight, and extra blankets, I told him I did. I saw him glance at my front tire for chains and then he waved me on.

About an hour into the trip, after I was over that pass, the chain on my left front tire broke. I had to take both chains off at that point. Thankfully, I was only 7 miles from the nearest town (Burney), and there was no longer snow on the road but just wet cement and a bit of slush. My mom directed me to the nearest Les Schwab, where I got studless snow tires for my car and another set of chains. The 2 feet of snow in Burney was true, but it wasn't on the road. They had piled it all in the middle, it was an easy town to maneuver through and they were well prepared for visitors. The ground was wet, there was no ice anywhere. I didn't have to use chains again! I went over several more passes but there was just sporadic slush. The snow plows kept the road pretty clear. It was a miracle in my opinion, after seeing the reports that the roads would be terrible. The wet roads were steaming themselves dry in front of me.

I arrived in Boise at 9:15 PM, and pulled up to the house to see both my boys outside in the pouring rain, waiting for me to arrive. They gave me a big hug and then helped me unload my car.

It's good to be home!

Here's a picture from today watching the kids after school. Guy came home early to help me out, since I'm still not 100% recovered.

Nico reading DogMan to Avery and Ivy.

All the kids had Valentine's parties today at school, Ivy came home wearing all pink and eating a pink heart sucker.

Nico's Valentine from his teacher was in his planner:

I got an email late last night from Nico's drama club teacher, they have assigned roles in the play they're doing! Nico was assigned the role of King Lobster. He is in Act 2, Scene 2, and then he plays  a different character (one of the sharks) in a later scene. Here's a shot of some of his lines:

There are two full pages like this one, plus another half a page, with his lines scattered like seen here. That's a good amount! Then he's got 3 lines as a shark. The total play is 18 pages long. I think there are 15 kids in his class. His performance is on April 11th, all are invited to come!! If you need specifics let me know!

Tonight Nico is contemplating writing a comic about "Word Crimes", based on a Weird Al video that Guy showed him called Word Crimes. Nico and I watched it tonight and we paused the video every so often so that I could explain what each word crime was (for example, using an apostrophe incorrectly). Then we read Captain Underpants so that I could point out every single word crime. We found about 15 word crimes in the first 2 pages. Captain Underpants is the best book for misspelled words and grammar problems. 

He has asked me to write him a story that has lots of word crimes in it, so I'm going to go do that now. Until next week!

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!

Wahoooooz

On Friday we went to a new splash pad, the only one in Boise (the rest are in Meridian), at Borah High School. It's right next to their pool but has a separate entrance. It is fenced in. We played in it for a while and then took a break on a bench outside the fenced in area. It was in the shade and the table had a built in checker board. Nico ate his snack there.

After the splash pad we went to the dollar store to pick up a flotation device for Nico. The ones you blow up and put on your arms. I put them on him that night and he wore them until it was time for bed. We went for a Strider ride while he was wearing them.

On Saturday we went to the market, where we saw a large Marimba band. Nico pulled me over there and we sat down and listened to them for about 30 minutes. Nico was mesmerized, he clapped after every song and then asked "Another one?" We were in the sun, so I eventually moved us over to the shade, where we saw Nico's teacher. They said hello and we sat next to them for a little while. Nico was very excited to see her.

Then we left to go to the other market, where Nico wanted a balloon. He got a fishing pole balloon this time.

That evening, Guy and Nico had some time together. They were going to be going to movie in the park every month this summer, but since that didn't turn out last month, they did something different tonight. Guy took Nico to the bookstore to play with the train, and then to the park to blow bubbles.

Saw Allicia on Monday and also on Tuesday. Sure do love them. So looking forward to moving day: September 13th!

On Tuesday, Guy rigged the Elefun game to an AC adapter so we could plug it into the wall instead of using batteries. This game is one we plan to play at Nico's party. An elephant with a long trunk shoots butterflies out and you run around with nets trying to catch them. Nico and I had tested it out last week, but the power of the fan was piddly and only about 5 butterflies made it out. So Guy upped the voltage from 6V to 12V. Now all the butterflies shoot out hard and all at once! A big improvement, but he is going to try to find a 7V adapter next weekend to tone it down a bit.

Then TODAY! Today is the day that we went to Wahooz to ride the go-carts to have a Mommy-son celebration of Nico's birthday. Nico was very excited about it. I brought the GoPro camera instead of my new one because of its small size and wide angle. Wahooz also has other attractions: a huge arcade, miniature golf, bumper boats, laser tag, and bowling. They measured him to make sure he was at least 40 inches, the requirement to be a passenger. Yep, he was tall enough! We gave the man our tickets, started walking toward the go-cart, and Nico started pulling me the other direction, saying NO! I pulled him aside and asked him if he was scared. It was very loud with all the motors of the go-carts idling at the same time, plus the super loud music so you could hear it over the sound of the engines. I understood his aversion. So we sat on a bench a little ways away and watched some other people riding the go-carts. He warmed up to the idea again and pulled me toward the go-carts again. He was fine for a while standing in line, but the noise, again, got to him. After a few minutes of happily standing in line, he started pulling me away from the noise.

Excitement that quickly wore off

Looking warily at the go-carts

So we got our tickets back and exchanged them for a course of miniature golf. There are two miniature golf courses, which I realized only after the fact that we had chosen the one with the line of people. Whoops! But Nico didn't mind waiting after every hole. He had much fun, and clapped every time either of us got the ball in the hole. He imitated curious george getting on the ground, eyeing the ball in relation to the hole.

Waiting for our turn. Can't believe we were lucky enough to catch a cool day.

So we get to hole 16. Hole 18 was right next to us, the place where you hit your ball and it eats it so that the game is over. If you hit the ball into a certain area, then this big Tiki statue shoots out an enormous torch of fire from its head. I found a picture of it, take a look:

So back to hole 16. Nico was finishing off his putting when someone successfully hit a ball into that certain area in the Tiki statue. About 10 seconds later a huge fireball emitted from the statue. It scared me and I jumped and cried out a little bit. You could FEEL the heat from this thing. I turned around to look at it and someone in front of us motioned to Nico and said "he's running." So, if you can imagine how Nico was afraid of the go carts, you can perhaps imagine a bit how this fire explosion affected him. I turned around to look and Nico was indeed running in the opposite direction. He turned to look at me and his whole face was quivering about to cry. Oh dear me!! I ran to him but he could barely listen to me he was so frantic. I calmed him enough to be able to run back and grab our clubs and my bag. I caught up with him and took him back the opposite direction. Unfortunately even if you back track all the way to the beginning of the golf course, you still have to pass by the tiki statue to get out. You can see in this aerial shot how that works.

Well Nico ran toward the fence, wanting to get out by crawling through, instead of passing by the statue. I told him that I knew it was hot and loud and big, but that the fire wouldn't hurt him and the statue wouldn't hurt him. I told him to close his eyes and put his head on my shoulder because we HAD to walk past it. I held him and he gripped me SO TIGHT while we passed it. And there was an instant calm after I did. Phew.

We returned our golf balls to the counter, since we didn't finish the course, and then wandered around the arcade. It is also very loud in the arcade. Nico wanted to try a few games, so we did, but every time we swiped our game card to start a game, the game would come to life. "WELCOME TO THIS GAME, PLEASE DO THIS AND THIS..." and then every game had loud music accompanying what the loud mouth was saying. Every time this happened, Nico backed away from the game, so didn't get to play much. We did win 20 tickets and redeemed them for a styrofoam airplane and a turtle eraser.

Photo booth

Then we made our way to Louie's. It is a nice restaurant that serves italian food. Spaghetti and pizza and other such things. We shared a big bowl of gluten-free spaghetti with meatballs.

Then home to eat chocolate cupcakes. I made a test batch for his birthday party on Tuesday. He likes it when I put a candle in it and sing him Happy Birthday, so I've been doing that.

Also, a slight milestone for his speech and communication: He clarified what he was asking because I didn't understand. He kept asking "What is this?" as he was holding a cup filled with a smoothie I had bought for him. I kept saying "smoothie" every time he asked. "What is this?" "A smoothie that I bought for you." "What is this?" "A smoothie" "What is this?" "A smoothie"…. Then he changed his question. "What is IN this?" !!!! "Bananas, strawberries, and orange juice!"

We are looking forward to this weekend as Grandpa and Grandma Russell are coming into town for Nico's birthday and for a family reunion. We are so excited to see them on Saturday!

Other pictures from this week.

Testing out camera settings

Climbing the "tree" in the front yard

Reading his big pile of library books while munching on a muffin

His very first lollipop