Winter Garden Aglow, Advent Calendars, Birds!

Last Friday we went to the Botanical Garden to see the Winter Garden Aglow! You know how we typically get our picture taken there, but for the past 2 years there has been no photographer there like there used to be. So our family picture this year is coming from a different source (stay tuned for that!)

We went straight to Santa to avoid the lines. Nico asked for Alphabots and Numberbots (toys from a catalog that he looked through last week)

Nico knows that Santa does not actually exist, but he still enjoys playing along.

Then we walked up the mountainside a bit and found this view. You can see downtown Boise in the background, and the Key Bank building with the Christmas tree on top.

We visited the trains as usual.

You can see Nico's red eye in this picture.

Like the doctor said, the red spot is disappearing slowly. Nico told me that a few days ago two girls were running around screaming on the playground because of his red eye. And that his classmates asked him to look to the right so they could see the red part, because it's creepy. I asked him how he felt when they said that and he shrugged "fine" and then kept right on talking about something else. Pretty sure it hasn't fazed him!

Saturday was a FULL day. We first went to the church to help them set up for Christmas. We helped decorate the Christmas tree. Afterward we headed straight to the MK Nature Center. There was a birdseed sale going on plus other activities and a bird presentation where you could meet the birds. They had a peregrine falcon, an owl (can't remember what kind) and an American Kestrel. We learned all kinds of things, like how they swoop to get their food.

Kestrel

 The falcon

The falcon had part of his wing missing but twice he tried to fly away and started hanging from his string, flapping. The handler said "Oh stop, that's so undignified" and everyone laughed. He/she (they're not sure) kept looking around the room up in the rafters like he was looking for a place to fly up to. 

Nico laughed whenever it would poop on the floor (they put protective papers on the floor for the occasion).

The owl (Nico remembers that it was a burrowing owl)

After this we went home and had lunch, then went out again to get our Christmas tree!

I should have taken a picture of the tree in our car and Nico smooshed by branches. We didn't think about putting it on top of our car. Maybe next year? Inside the car Guy started getting a bit of a headache. In the past he has struggled with headaches and Christmas trees, but it hasn't happened for a few years. He had a headache that day and the next day but hasn't had trouble since then. The smell from the tree has died down a bit, so that may be why. We enjoyed putting the ornaments on the tree! It is a little squishy in here now, we chose too WIDE of a tree this time. We had no thought to whether we would have room to get around it! Heehee. Then we made pizza and watched a movie.

At church on Sunday Nico got a prize for finishing his weekly Gratitude Journal. For the month of November he had to write down 3 things every day that he was thankful for. Here's the list starting from the beginning. Long list, but fun to record for later. All punctuation is true to what he wrote. Parenthesis are my comments.

Trading candy.
pizza.
Fall.
Good pancakes.
My mom.
Halloween.
My G.G.
God.
Heaven.
Going to Washington.
My dad.
The world.
Having Mario Kart.
School.
United States of America.
To learn chess at school.
Going to Grama and Papa's house.
Going to Kids Discovery Expo with Grama and my cousins.
Grama and papa.
Winter.
A house.
My Grama and Grampa .
Books.
Clocks.
G.G.'s birthday.
Alexa.
Frinds. (friends)
Water.
Animals.
The sun.
paper.
My cousins.
farmers.
Thanksgiving.
car
Bed
Christmas
Backpack
Clothes
Bunnies
Money
games
flowres
stuffed animals
pencils
Homework
Grama and papa moveing.
Flashlights.
popcorn
chips
Lexie
Rory
Bruce
Lily
Kia (Kai)
Foth of July.
doors
meldls (medals from advancing in his Chess class)
smiles
soap
light
droors (drawers - because then everything would just be sitting on top of the counter)
graveyard
Oils
Henna
TVs
Christmas Trees
stickers
Bookshelves
Pictures
Glasses
Legos
Cups
Songs
A heart
tape
a diary
an Addvint calider (advent calendar)
cafe drops (cough drops)
rugs
me
angels
tissues
ornaments

It was a really good exercise, it got Nico thinking. I'd like to do the same thing next year if the church doesn't happen to do it. 

Sunday afternoon Nico and I went to the Grandparents Salisbury house and hung out for a few hours!

Reading a devotional in the morning. We've decided not to style his hair with pomade in the winter, because it prevents him from wanting to put on a hat or a hood, rightly so, because it really messes it up. This is the fuzz-ball look. You just need a little water on a comb and it calms right down.

We have started our Advent calendars. Our traditional Christmas tree one and then the online one Grama Russell gets us each year. Here's a few screen shots from that one.

This is what it looks like at night. In the day time (starting at 6am) it is light outside.

Snowflakes designed by Nico

We've also started doing our Advent candles. Nico has been enjoying lighting matches and blowing out flames every night. He has even learned how to extinguish a flame by pinching the wick with wet fingers. We have a little book we read from every night.

Nico has had a cold this week, some coughing and phlegm going on, but no fever.

And that's about it I think..

See you next week!

Returning to School

Guy and I were without Nico last Friday, we had a quiet day at home sorting through some stuff. Nico came home on Saturday from the Grandparents Salisbury's house. He had so much fun while there. He has been asking ever since when he will be going back.

On Sunday our church dedicated the new construction starting on Monday, to add on to the children's wing. All the kids wore construction hats and were given a shovel to be a part of the groundbreaking. We helped Nico push his shovel through the grass, it was difficult. He dug a big hole and would have kept digging if we hadn't stopped him. It's not often you can dig a hole in the middle of thick grass in a big yard. The rest of Sunday was a lazy day at home! Miss Erin, the children's pastor, asked Nico if he wanted to read a verse in front of the congregation during our Christmas Eve service. He said Yes! He will be reading Luke 2:10-12.

But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”

Nico went back to school on Monday after having the week off for Thanksgiving. The book fair has been happening this whole week and we always let him pick out a book to buy. This year he chose a diary with a lock and key on it! He picked it up today and has been working on it all afternoon and is now even working on it while he's in bed (he gets to read for 30-45 minutes before lights out. Most of the time he chooses to do a workbook, or something similar like filling out his diary). It's a diary that asks questions "What do you and your friends like to do for fun?" Or, "Whats pets do you own or want to own?" I don't know most of what he's writing because whenever I look at him he says "DON'T LOOK AT MY JOURNAL!" Heehee. But I have caught snippets of it because he has to ask me how to spell things sometimes. Currently he's filling out a free-write section where he has to write all about his life up until this point. He started with talking about how he was a baby in my belly and all of a sudden at the hospital he popped out. I hope I get to read the rest of it someday!

A few of his other before-bed reading choices this week:
An advent calendar that belongs to Evelyn but Allicia is letting Nico read it until before December 1st comes (we returned it tonight). It tells the story of Christmas in 24 little tiny books. Nico loves to know if something he is reading or watching is real, and he asks us all the time, "Is this real?" He asked me while reading this story if the places were real - Bethlehem, Jerusalem, etc. I said yes and he was very excited and said he wanted to visit Jerusalem someday. Then he got down to the details and asked When. Can I miss school for it? How long will we be gone? :)

Filling out his project journal with bird facts. He chooses a card from his bird deck and first draws a picture of the bird and colors it in, then flips the page and writes down all the facts about the bird as listed on the card. The journal even has a little flap/envelope in the back where he stores the card he is working on. He did 2 1/2 birds over a few days and then it kind of petered out.

Yesterday morning Nico told me it felt like he had an eyelash in his eye. Yesterday evening I noticed a blood bruise on his eye in the corner. When I saw it I freaked out (quietly) and did a quick internet search. That helped quite a bit, and it supposedly just looks worse than it is, especially since it wasn't hurting him or affecting his vision. I figured it happened because he was rubbing his eye too much when he had something in it. But the next morning (this morning) it had grown much larger, so we decided to take him into the doc just to be safe. His finger in this picture is covering up the exact spot on his eye that the red blotch is. This is him in the doc's office signing the word "No". Which means, Mom, stop taking my picture.

Doc said it was nothing to worry about, even though it had grown. Because there is no pain and no restriction of movement in his eye, it is fine. It's like a bruise under the skin but since it's on the eye it's red and it looks so dark because the eyes are white. She explained that his eye was bleeding between two of the layers and Nico asked in shock "SO MY EYE IS BLEEDING?".

After the appointment Nico said it didn't turn out as bad as he thought it was going to. If he was nervous or scared at all he didn't show it one bit. He ate a huge lunch right beforehand (I mention this because when I'm nervous I can't eat!) and was his normal happy self while waiting for the doctor.

 I asked him if I could take a picture of his eye for the blog and he said NO.

Tomorrow is Dec 1st! We have our advent tree out ready and waiting, and we received our Jacquie Lawson advent calendar from Grandma Russell, we are looking forward to starting both of them tomorrow!

Thanksgiving!

Last Saturday Guy took Nico to get a hair cut. He took him to the same place he goes to get his hair and beard cut, the Beardsmith. Nico got a cut called "The Good Boy", which he really really likes. Guy also picked him up some pomade. The part in his hair is a "hard part" which means they actually shaved a small strip of his hair where the part is, so the part is easy to find. This really has made it easier to part his hair.

This is what he looked like when he came home. He didn't want to pose for a picture so I caught him while he was playing with his legos (see the fire truck go zoooooooom on the floor).

That evening we had pizza with Jeff and Allicia and crew. Allicia has been gluten free for a while now so we made her crust for her, and they made Guy's crust for him since he can eat gluten. They had a whole bunch of personal pan pizza crusts they had baked up, so Guy was able to eat several different ones with different toppings and he said it was awesome to be able to do that. We had so many more toppings than usual. I stuck with a cheese pizza and Nico prefers just meat on his. Pepperoni and sausage. But we have noticed a trend, that Nico doesn't eat much when there's exciting things going on.

After pizza, Guy gave Jeff and Allicia each half a pumpkin roll that Grandma Russell had made and sent to us. They were so happy about that! Then we descended to the basement to watch part of an episode of Charlie Brown. 

On Tuesday we spent the day at the Salisbury house. Bruce and Rory were there for Nico to play with, and Grandma Salisbury and I cooked a turkey and made a few of the salads for Thanksgiving. In the afternoon when Papa was done working, we started watching Star Wars: A New Hope and Nico was interested for about 15 minutes before he went into the other room. He loves the Star Wars characters but he has never seen the movies, someday he will!

Getting ready to watch Star Wars

Playing legos with Bruce

It was a full and fun day. Guy joined us after work for dinner and then we headed home.

Wednesday was a day full of cooking for me. I made the stuffing, 2 pies, and deviled eggs. Guy wasn't here to taste test the stuffing so I sent him a picture of it and asked for a virtual taste test. He responded "😋  I can run home real quick. It's basically and emergency." Hehe. He didn't run home, and the stuffing turned out fine!

Thursday we headed over to the Salisbury house early. I started the sauerkraut and pork in the crock pot right away, and then we spent the morning slowly getting everything ready for the meal at 2pm. Guy turned on the MST3K Turkey Day Marathon for everyone in the living room. That was a hit!

When it was time to eat, Pa gave a short devotional about being thankful, then we each went around the table saying something we were thankful for. Most everyone said they were thankful for family. Guy said he was thankful for family, and for his job and his boss. Nico said he was thankful for his mommy 😍. 

After the meal was over, Grandma sent everyone out of the room except for the parents (me and Guy plus all my brothers and their wives) so that we could do the Lego Challenge. Grandma and Pa and Wanda (Alanna's mom) and the grandkids were going to go clean up the kitchen. Grandma gave each of us a lego that could be built into 3 different legos. After we built one of them, we had to take a picture of it, then take it apart and build the next one, etc. Guy and I won 1st place! Our prize was a light you can shine on your house that displays swirling snowflakes.

Here we are with the last lego we put together, a flying robot.

Left to right: Jeremy, Bambi, Guy, Joanna, David, Jill, Alanna, Jonny

Rory, Lily, Lexie, Nico

Rory and Nico

Playing baseball in the backyard with cousins and Papa

After the Lego challenge, we gathered in the living room to play games. 1 - Ornament exchange 2 - Treasure hunt 3 - Unwrap challenge.  The unwrap challenge required everyone to take turns wearing gloves and spending 15 seconds trying to unwrap this huge present. Whoever got to the middle first won the present. Inside that huge box was an iTunes Gift Card and Bambi won it! Watch the video at the end to see Guy and Nico both take turns trying to open it!

After games, we ate dessert, then we all started packing up leftovers and heading home. The grandkids all stayed overnight last night and will stay overnight again tonight, so we said goodbye to Nico and headed home! When we got home, we showed our snowflake light to Jeff and Allicia, and Ivy who was still up. Ivy rolled around in the lights for a good while while we chatted.

Nico has been having tummy aches, presumably from all the sugar we recently introduced into his life? They are not "sick" tummy aches, they are "pain" tummy aches. I am hoping to get a handle on them. He seems to be much better when he doesn't eat sugar. He doesn't eat a lot of the stuff anyway, but I think his body is just not used to it! 

Here's the video of the unwrap challenge!

Kids Discovery Expo, and Winter Jam!

Last Friday night, all of us met over at the Salisbury house to talk about Thanksgiving. My brother Jonny and sister-in-law Alanna were also there, with Lexie! We split up the Thanksgiving food tasks and then left Nico to stay overnight along with Lexie.

On Saturday I had a henna booth at the Kids Discovery Expo, in the afternoon Grandma Salisbury and 4 cousins including Nico came to the Expo to enjoy the kids activities. They stayed for a few hours, I gave them all henna, then they helped me pack up my car.

Inside an ambulance

Virtual reality.

Thanks for the pictures Mom!

For Saturday pizza nights we have been enjoying watching Charlie Brown shows and then one time we rented the new Peanuts movie from Amazon. We've watched them so much we have parts memorized and Nico acts them out during the day, particularly the one where Rerun wants a dog for Christmas. He has the tone just right when he says "But Mommm!"

On Tuesday we went to visit G.G. after school. Nico has been filling out a Thankful journal that he got from church, he has to write down 3 things that he's thankful for every day. When it was G.G.'s birthday LAST Tuesday, he saw it on the calendar and wrote down that he was thankful for G.G. In church on Sunday they wrote down some of the things they were thankful for onto hand cutouts, and then glued them together. He wrote G.G. on one of the hands, so I brought her the hand chain so she could have it. While we were there Nico played a little bit on the keyboard and G.G. gave me the Steptoe Butte quilt that she designed herself and created. She had already given me the thing that hangs it on the wall, so now I have the complete set. I am curious about someday visiting Steptoe Butte to see it in person! It's a beautiful quilt!

Last night (Thursday night), Nico and I went to a concert called Winter Jam, it's a collection of Christian artists that come together for one night. It was at the Taco Bell Arena which is right next to the BSU Stadium. I completely spaced the fact that they would only accept cash for parking, entrance, and food, and didn't have any on hand. As I was turning around to leave the parking lot to get to the bank, I realized I still had an envelope of cash in my purse from the Kids Discovery Expo that I had conveniently forgotten to deposit on Monday, and Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Score! So we were able to go right in. As soon as we got into the building I purchased a water and then we chose our seats. 2nd floor, off to the left. As we were sitting there Nico looked up to the 3rd floor balcony and said "I want to go up there!" so I said OK and I followed him to where he wanted to sit. He chose a nice corner spot that hardly had anyone sitting there. (When the concert got into full swing it did fill up pretty full though!)

 Our firsts chosen spot

Our second chosen spot

Video below with the view from both spots!

The "Pre-Jam" started about 6:15, and we were there until about 9PM. We heard several songs that Nico recognized, including "Chainsaw" by Family Force Five (one of his favorites) and "You Can't Stop Me" by Andy Mineo. I don't suggest you listen to the Andy Mineo song unless you like screaming. 

After Andy Mineo left the stage, I asked Nico if he wanted to stay or go home, and he said go home. He was so tired!! So we missed about 3 of the artists but I saw the one I really wanted to see and I was tired too! 

While walking through the halls we passed the candied nut stand and Nico asked what they were. So I bought him some! He chose almonds. He wasn't sure what almonds were so I told him that almond butter is what I put on his pancakes. So we walked back to our car along the greenbelt at 9PM (I know, Mom!)

He went right to bed after we got home.

Trying out a new natural dye called jagua, dyes blue instead of red/brown! This is the tattoo Nico chose.

A squirrel eating our pumpkin outside.

Nico is enjoying finding Waldo in Guy's all-inclusive Waldo book, and he's also been enjoying the National Geographic KIDS magazines. And sometimes instead of reading at night he chooses to do math problems and other school-type work in the 2nd grade workbook we got him from Costco. 

I think that's all this week!

Until the next!

Turn down the volume, video may be loud!

Update coming!

Nico and I were out late last night at a concert, update coming mid-morning!

Mario Kart, and not much else!

We spent a lot of last weekend playing Mario Kart, Jeff & Allicia were out of town so we spread out a bit and hung out downstairs a lot! Nico is getting so good at Mario Kart he is starting to beat me at it!

Hm... Looks like that's the only picture I took of him last week! Bummer! It was kind of a normal week, not much happened. 

Guy did have a sinus headache and a slight fever on Sunday but was all better on Monday.  His boss told him to work from home on Tuesday because he had some programming to hyper-focus on. He works much faster away from the distractions at work. He gets to do that same thing tomorrow!

Nico has had a slight cough but nothing else. I thought I might be catching it but whatever it was went away fast! We've been doing elderberry syrup a lot!

We tried a new recipe that was a success. Eggs, bread, sausage, all baked together. Egg casserole. It's not often that new recipes are a hit with both Guy and Nico! 

I guess that's it! Oh, we did have our last Small Group meeting on Sunday, a potluck, Guy wasn't able to come because of his headache, but Nico and I went. We won't meet again until the new year. Guy is the small group coordinator at our church so he is looking into what book or Bible study we're going to do next.

Until next time!

Halloween and other such fun things!

Last Saturday was the first Saturday in a while that we had nothing going on! In the afternoon Nico and I went to the Discovery Center to see their new display, Mythbusters! They had several stations set up to test things that the show Mythbusters had tested. This particular one is: When you drop a piece of toast does it always land butter side down? There were several different ways you could "drop" bread. We tried all of them and used the provided Abucus beads to keep track of which way the toast landed. It was about 50 - 50. As expected.

 Build a house, and see if a gust of wind will blow it down.

How long can you hang on a ledge? This is HARD. I got about 5 seconds in before I couldn't hold on anymore. Apparently it takes strong muscles in your fingers. I thought it would be more of an arm thing. Nico did better than me.

Other cool exhibits: Try to remove the tablecloth from a table with stuff on it. I was able to try it and succeeded! And do you get more rain on you when you walk, or run? They had two corridors where you could either walk or run through rain. Then you go check yourself under black lights to see how wet you got. Apparently the test on the show showed that with simulated rain, you get more wet when running. With actual rain, you get more wet when walking.

Nico discovered his book of paper airplanes that was tucked away in the desk, and has spent a lot of time the past few days putting planes together.

He also started asking if he could wear two shirts, one over the other. He did that for several days this week.

Then of course, trick or treating! There is a video at the end of the post of that. Nico has become more aware of candy, and the fact that we've been keeping him from most of it for most of his life. So we're becoming more lenient. Nico ate M&Ms for the first time on Halloween while we were trick-or-treating. When I was pregnant with Nico I would buy the huge bags of M&Ms. I remember leaving a church service once at Marysville Naz while I was pregnant and sitting out in the lobby, just so I could reach into my purse and shove M&Ms in my mouth for a few minutes. Nico loves M&Ms and has declared them his favorite candy. On Halloween he also ate a Crunch bar and a piece of gum. That next day he had Nerds and an Airhead for the first time. Then he ate a Dum Dum! This is big news. We figure it's only once a year, right? But then while trick-or-treating he started asking people at their door if they had M&Ms, and he would spend time flipping through their baskets trying to find something he could eat. At one house he refused to take the glowstick they were offering. We talked with him about that. After we talked to him we told him he had to do 3 things every time someone answered the door: 1 - Say "Trick or Treat!" 2 - Take what they give you and 3 - Say "Thank you!" He did great after that!

 Nico the Ninja. Ivy the Bumble-bee. Avery the dinosaur. Evelyn the witch.

On Wednesday night, Guy & I, and Jeff & Allicia took turns watching the kids so we could all go to our parent/teacher conferences. Ours was first, so we walked to the school and sat down with Ms Lung to talk about Nico. He is doing really well in reading and in math. We are so proud of him! She showed us his first short story. He wrote the story by hand, it was edited, and then he typed the whole thing into the computer. 

Ms Lung said he insisted on doing chapters.

Then his first poem. Nico was adamant on not using their format when writing his poem. Ms Lung said he could do what he wanted as long as he included some of the stuff they were learning about (the 5 senses)

On Wednesday we also got a new Laser Moose book in the mail from the Grandparents Russell! Thank you! He brought it to the dentist with him this morning and read it while we were in the waiting room. As we were leaving the office after his appointment, the lady who was in the waiting room with us at the beginning was just getting into her car, and she stopped us to ask us what the Laser Moose was. I told her it was a comic book where a moose can shoot lasers from his eyes. She said she used to live in Alaska and that she has never seen a Laser Moose before. He he.

The Laser Moose book has a ton of disco balls in it. They get knocked off a cliff and come raining down on the forest and smashing into the ground. After Nico had his cavity filled at the dentist, he went to the treat drawer and found a disco ball keychain! The timing was impeccable.

Then of course we went over to Bricks & Mini-Figs next door and Nico made a new Mini-Fig. He made this one to look like Emmet from the Lego Movie.

Then we ran some errands, went to Target where Nico spent his own money to buy a Minecraft backpack. He is very excited about that. Then we met Grandma Salisbury at Costco! We had fun wandering around. I don't know how it happened but we ended up with a HUGE bag of M&Ms and a new car toy (Thanks Grandma S!) ;)

Brats and sprouts for lunch.

Nico has today and tomorrow off for parent/teacher conferences. This afternoon Guy called to tell me he locked his keys in the car at the dentist. So Nico and I drove to the dentist before realizing that the Ford has a keypad he could have used to get back into the car. Whooooops. Well, neither of us could remember the code anyway! Hah. I'll have to look it up.

Now the video!