Evelyn's Birthday Party, and Grandma Camp!

Last Saturday was Evelyn's birthday! I tried to capture some pictures on my camera but I think the SD card is toast, so none of them were saved. Bummer! But I did catch one on my phone.

The theme of the party was "7 Evelyn". They even made her a shirt that said it using the 7-11 logo. So there was "gas station" type food, including sushi, which Nico actually loved. They were california rolls. He brought his chopsticks out and ate it with that. There were also fireworks, as usual. All the kids crowded around the front window, safely and warmly inside, while Jeff set of fireworks on the front lawn on a huge wooden board. 

Evelyn received a Zelda video game that the kiddos went downstairs to play after the party. Evelyn was nice enough to give Nico one of the memory slots on the game so that he could have his own account and play it too. He started his game on Sunday night I think!

Evelyn's cousin was in town for her birthday, and they invited Nico downstairs quite often to play Mario Kart or Zelda. They got along really well. They rough housed and played downstairs while they took turns playing video games. 

On Tuesday Guy and I dropped Nico off at the Grandparents Salisbury's house for a Winter Grandma Camp. I can't wait to hear all about it when he gets back tomorrow. Grandma has sent over a few pictures from their time:

They played Hide and Seek outside

Nico counting

Playing with clay

Eating breakfast with Bruce. Grandma said that Nico asked Bruce: "Can you be my friend?" and Bruce said "Yes, that would be awesome!"

Playing Jenga

I know they went to see a movie, Ferdinand, and then today they went ice skating. They also roasted hot dogs over a fire outside. 

Guy and I have been hanging out, watching movies, we also went for a very long walk along the greenbelt. Taking naps, reading books, playing games. We watched Guardians of the Galaxy 2, and The Case for Christ, and also a bunch of Burn Notice episodes. 

That's really it for this week! Nico comes home tomorrow after lunch, he starts up school again on Monday!

Oh one last thing! Nico told us he wants to hack when he grows up. I had visions of him breaking into computers but what he really meant was doing hacks, like those videos you see online of certain ways to do things that are supposedly awesome. "Hacks". He wants to do hacks. While packing for Grandma Camp he implemented a hack he saw on YouTube, where you fold up the underwear and the socks into the t-shirt that you're packing, and then fold the socks over the whole bundle after you've rolled it up. He was very excited about doing that.

Christmas, Christmas, happy time of year!

On Friday the Grandparents Russell arrived! They stayed up in the suite while they were here, so they were just a staircase away. Quick hanging-out access! Nico enjoys taking baths up in the suite's huge bathtub, so he did that on Friday night after dinner (which we ate in the suite!) He opened a gift that night, a very funny book called "The Dumb Bunnies Go to the Zoo". Grandma read it to him, then it was bedtime!

Saturday was a full day. Pancakes in the morning, then we drove over to Nampa to celebrate Christmas with GG and Aunt Pat. Nico opened a quilt that Grandma Russell made. My favorite is the Three Stooges fabric you can see in the corners, it has sayings from the Three Stooges like "Nyuk Nyuk Nyuk". It is an awesome quilt. We put it on his bed that night!

While we were in Nampa, Nico had a birthday party to attend, one of his friends from church was turning 8 years old. Straight from there we went to the Christmas Party at the Grandparents Salisbury's house. GG also came along with us! We ate pizza, sang songs, Papa gave a devotional and read the Christmas Story from the book of John. A fresh perspective! And then we played games! The saran wrap game started with a huge ball of saran wrap that had prizes wrapped up in it. (Thanks to Aunt Jill Marie for putting it together!) Everyone got a turn trying to unwrap part of the ball, while someone else rolled dice until they got doubles. If you unwrapped a prize while it was your turn, you got to keep the prize. Then the person who rolled doubles  had a chance to unwrap the ball while someone else rolled the dice. It was so much fun! Lots of prizes for everyone.

Thanks to Uncle Jonny for catching this picture of us :)

I think Nico won both bags of M&Ms that were in the ball (they are his favorite candy) so he was a tad over-sugared that night. heehee. We had so much fun. Thank you Papa and Grandma Salisbury for the incredibly fun time!

On Sunday we went to church, a shorter service than usual and Nico read from his Bible Luke 2:10-12, part of the Christmas story. Then the children sang Away in a Manger on stage and everyone joined in. Sunday was a lazy afternoon, Grandma and Nico went out snow-playing. They walked over to Quarry View Park.

After we ate dinner, Nico opened a gift from Guy and I, a board game called Cat Lady. We played it that night before bed.

I finished wrapping presents that night and we stuck everything under the tree. Nico didn't stay up at all, and didn't hear Guy say "Ho Ho Ho, Merrrrry Christmas!", he was fast asleep. The first thing Nico did upon waking is open his stocking. Then all of us gathered for breakfast (cinnamon rolls, scrambled eggs, bacon), and started opening presents! While Nico was waiting to open presents he had pulled all of his from under the tree to make a big pile.

That afternoon we watched White Christmas while Nico played with toys and read his new books. What an enjoyable and laid back day! Grandma and Nico went on another walk that day to Quarry View to play in the snow again.

Some random pictures from our time!

Playing with his Alphabots

Most of these pictures are thanks to Grandma Russell!! And then below you will find a video of our time, most taken by Grandma.

Tuesday morning after breakfast the Grandparents Russell headed to the airport. We planned out a few of the next trips this next year, and we will see them again in March during Nico's spring break! They are adding a kitchenette up in the suite that will be there when the Grandparents come next. Yay! Thank you for the visit, the visiting, the sitting, the talking, the watching, the eating, the laughing, we enjoyed your visit very much!

Tuesday was a day of cleaning-up-Christmas for us. We don't necessarily take down our Christmas tree the day after Christmas, but this year we did, it was dried up and leaving its green petals everywhere. We pulled it out through the front door and parked it next to our front window in the corner until trash day. Then we packed up our Christmas box and shipped it back down to the cellar. That afternoon we sat around being lazy, reading, playing with toys, watching a movie. 

Wednesday was the start of Nico's Hitting Clinic for baseball. Held at Timberline High School, he is doing 3 days of the camp where he practices hitting baseballs. He has had so much fun the past 2 days. Wednesday after it was over, Guy and I and Evelyn picked him up and then drove over to the mall. Nico received a Build-a-Bear gift certificate for Christmas from Jeff & Allicia so he could get a YOSHI stuffed animal! So we went there to redeem it. Evelyn also got a gift certificate for Christmas. Instead of getting another Build-a-Bear (she already has one, a dragon named Toothless, from How to Train your Dragon), she brought Toothless with her and bought him a saddle.

Afterwards we ate lunch at the mall, then stopped off at See's Candy to get everyone one piece. Nico chose a lime truffle, the same one he had chosen from Aunt Pat's See's candy box when she offered him one on Saturday. Evelyn chose a strawberry cream one. Guy picked up some Starbucks coffee at the mall using the Starbucks gift card I won doing the saran wrap game, then we headed back home. 

Nico has been carrying Yoshi around everywhere with him. Feeding him food. He even brought Yoshi with him when he crawled into our bed in the middle of the night.

Enjoy the video!!

Chess Tournament, Slapping

On Saturday Nico attended his very first Chess Party & Tournament. It was at Smoky Mountain Pizza, for 3 hours, I just dropped him off and then picked him up later. They had charge of the two banquet rooms, one of the rooms was where they played chess, and the other room was where they ate pizza and watched a movie. Nico played 4 games of chess, winning 1 of them, and came home with a 2nd place trophy. Everyone got a trophy, so that was cool! They made sure he had a gluten free pizza and he said he ate 4 pieces while watching the Batman Lego movie. At the end they had an awards ceremony where the parents could see Coach Vellotti hand out the trophies. On our way out the door he handed out candy canes. Nico chose a strawberry one.

Sunday was the church Christmas program. Nico sat with me in the service while Guy ran the sound. It was a fun drama. Afterward, there was a taco bar lunch. It was very good. 

Guy has had this whole past week off, which has been awesome! We have been eating lunch together while watching some Burn Notice on Netflix every afternoon. Nico had a half day today and Guy joined him at school during the Christmas Around the World Buffet lunch they had in his class. Nico is now officially on winter break! 

Tonight Guy took him to band practice with him for a little bit so he could practice reading Luke 2:10-12 from his Bible while holding a microphone. Apparently he did well! We will see him do this in front of the church on Sunday.

A few of the ways we have been passing our time in the morning. Playing "Chessers", which is a combination of chess and checkers, rules by Nico.

Playing Bird Bingo

Nico asked Guy at the beginning of the week that every day he comes from school could Guy slap him in the face when he comes inside the door. ????? Guy, of course, agreed to do this. See video below of how Guy did this on Monday. Every day after this Guy has chosen a different way to surprise Nico with slapping. Yesterday he waited outside in the alley right next to the clubhouse. As Nico came home he was telling Evelyn that his Dad was going to slap him when he came home so he asked Evelyn to go inside first. But before they could even get inside, Guy jumped out and slapped Nico. Then this afternoon Guy was hiding inside again and Nico made Evelyn go inside first. Guy of course didn't slap her. heehee.

Tomorrow Grampa and Gramma Russell are coming into town!! We are so excited to see them. It will be a fun Christmas!

And without further ado, the slapping:

Trebuchet, GG, Reader's Theater

On Sunday we opened up the trebuchet assembly kit that Grampa Russell sent us. Nico even remembered to put on his safety goggles while assembling it :) heehee.

See the video at the end to see him demonstrate how it works! Here he is the next day using the sandpaper that came with the kit to smooth out some of the rough edges on his trebuchet. 

When Guy came home from work that night he had it all set up to fling the clay ball at him as soon as he came in the door. 

On Monday, Grandma Salisbury and I hiked up Table Rock while Nico was at school! It was very cold, brrrr!

On Tuesday Nico and I went to see GG after school. It was great to catch up with her!

Nico had a bit of a fever this afternoon after school, and a headache. Before bed tonight he said he had a tummy ache. We'll see how he feels in the morning! I'm hoping it resolves quickly for him. He seemed really interested in essential oils this afternoon after I showed him how he could look up stuff in the book to see which oils to use. He asked both Guy and I what kinds of problems we had and he looked them up and offered oils to us, then he said, "I'm an aromatherapist because I used oils, right??"

He is reading Magic Treehouse books, he is on #25. And he started reading the Amulet graphic novels again, checking them out from the library. He just finished #1, there are 7 total.

Guy is doing sound for the Christmas program at church, so he has been at practice every night this week except Monday. The performance is Sunday, with a potluck afterward. Guy has 3 weeks off from work starting Saturday!! He is very excited and ready for this work week to be over.

Video below has Nico demonstrating the trebuchet, and also some snippets from Reader's Theater at school. His teacher took video of all the kids' presentations to the Kindergarten class, and sent them to the parents. Cool that she did that! Looks like I messed up the title on the video when the Reader's Theater starts, it's supposed to say "Reader's Theater" :)

See you all next week!

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!