Skateboard Park, Another VBS, and Birthday!

On Friday I took Nico in the early morning to one of the local skateboard parks, Fort Boise Skateboard Park. It had a big pit with a bunch of ups and downs and since we were the only ones there I let Nico go down in there to run around. He rode his skateboard for a few minutes but then discovered that it was fun trying to climb up the sides, so that's what he spent the rest of the time doing. When people started showing up, I had him get out of the pit. We watched them ride and jump all over the place. Nico saw that the kids were putting BOTH feet on the skateboard instead of just one (I had tried telling him the day before that he should try to put his other foot up on the board but he didn't want to hear it, hehe!!), so he wanted to try it. He did it! He pushed himself with one foot then brought it up to the board behind his other one.

One of the parents there started talking to me, and him and his 8 year old son were very nice to Nico and the 8 year old boy took Nico down into a smaller pit and helped him ride back and forth on either side of the curve to get him used to the motion. Another 12 year old kid was very nice to Nico too and told me all about how there are skateboarding lessons that could help Nico. They all told me what kind of skateboard to buy for Nico and helmet and gear, etc., and where to get it from. I have not met a nicer group of skateboarders in my life! Nico, after coming home on Friday, has not wanted to skateboard at all. Not sure when he'll try again, but for now he's content to have tried it and had fun for a few days. I didn't get much of a video from the skateboard park, at least none of it when the kids were helping him out in the pit, but I did get a few shots of Nico on his own down there. You can see the video at the end of the post. In the video you'll also see how he skateboards without putting his back foot on the board. This was before the kids showed up.

On Sunday, Nico got to spend the afternoon with Sarah. She is the teenager who watched the kids during Bible Study. Nico loves her and loves going over to her house. She offered to watch Nico to pay me back for some essential oil stuff, so I said YES! Since I had a LOT of coursework to finish up, Guy and I took the time to go to Starbucks. We sat across from each other sipping our drinks, each with our laptops, and we both worked on stuff. It was very pleasant and I hope to be able to do things like that more often!!

Monday started VBS at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church. Nico thought I was going to stay with him and Evelyn, so didn't want me to leave. But, I convinced him. Today when I dropped him off took a LOT of convincing. I may or may not have told him that we'd have to rethink his birthday party if he didn't let go of my leg and go inside with Evelyn. :/ Don't worry, the birthday party is still on. I was convinced he was just being bored and whiny, and I was right.. but there was probably a better way to handle that. I listened to him, I told him I understood, I reasoned with him, I was nice, then I was firm, then I walked away, then he chased me, then I pulled out the birthday party thing. Thankfully he listened quick and had no more trouble. I think he would have just rather been home playing on his iPad.  Because that's what he usually tells me when I ask him why he doesn't want to be somewhere.

Wednesday was Nico's birthday! Growing up I always remember my parents putting out presents on the table with a card so when I woke up I would see presents on the table and get to open them up right then. I loved it! A day all about me. So this is what I did for Nico. I had Guy stop by Freddies on the way to work one day to pick up Nico a "Dinosaur Car" that he has been asking for for a long while. I wrapped that, put two bows on it, bought him two mylar balloons - a spider man one and a happy  birthday cupcake one. I put $5 in a card for him, I also put figs and chocolate and a brownie on the table. When he woke up I said "Go get Daddy from downstairs and then come up here and look what's on the table for you!" There were no lights on yet so he still had no idea. He was very excited. He had fun opening his present and he said "A dinosaur car!!" It's so fun to see him so excited. We put candles in his breakfast brownie and sang to him. At the last minute he said "WHERE'S MY BIRTHDAY HAT!??!" so we grabbed it for him.

After VBS that day, I took Nico and Evelyn to Reel Foods Fish Market, where they have deep fried gluten free Fish 'n' Chips. The dipping sauce was their favorite part. They ate and were happy. Then I took them to Tree City Juice and Smoothie Cafe and bought them each a smoothie. Strawberries, bananas, peaches, and OJ. We sat for a while and then I took them home.

Nico and Evelyn are like siblings! I remember when I was little, driving my brothers NUTS whenever we were in the car, and that's exactly what Evelyn does for Nico. I think Evelyn is very similar to how I was at that age. I can see it in her eyes... Except her imagination is a bit more than mine was. She likes to tell stories about thieves and animals on our rides to VBS, it's very entertaining. And then she pushes Nico's buttons, which can get him screaming pretty quick. But sometimes it's not without his prompting. He'll finally get her to stop doing something to him and then he'll poke her with his foot, or do the thing that he was trying to get her to stop doing. hah.. Nico often tells me that Evelyn is his sister. I've explained it a few times so I think he understands now.

Birthday party is this Saturday, 4 PM, here! It'll be a great weekend with Grandparents Russell visiting!

Ivy holding Nico's finger. He likes to do "This Little Piggy" on her toes.

Nico at the skatepark

Christmas in July, dancing, and a skateboard

Nico woke up several times in the middle of the night on Friday night, to ask me if it was time to go to the cabin. On Saturday we got ready and drove up there early. There was a Christmas in July craft that my mom put together for all the girls, and the kids had a craft of their own that Alanna organized. We made Christmas trees from styrofoam and fabric squares, cotton balls, and pins. It was a lot of fun, and I got to see an old friend plus all my sisters! It was a great event that my mom organized. She actually organized it for last November (or was it December?) but they got snowed in and so had to cancel it. To avoid that problem again she decided to do the craft in the middle of July :)

The craft the kids did looked like fun. Painting on canvases with hand prints and foot prints making Christmas shapes like reindeers and santa claus. Nico decided he was done after painting his canvas completely brown with nothing else. I asked him at home just today if he wanted to add anything to it and he said "No". So, brown canvas it is! We'll hang it on our wall. I'm proud! :)

After getting home on Saturday, we woke Guy up and then Guy and Nico went out for a bit. They stopped by the PO Box to pick up a package that Grandma Russell sent Nico. VBS music! (more on that later) They were back by 6 so that we could venture over to Red Robin to celebrate the fact that we paid off our first debt. More yummy food.

On Sunday Nico had a fun day. After church I dropped him off back home so I could go out to eat and a movie with friends from church to celebrate a birthday. Nico got to go with Jeff & Allicia, Evelyn, Avery, and Ivy on an adventure to the "beach". They rode their bikes to Municipal park and then went to the little beach area at the river, near the Fish Park. Nico stripped down all of his clothes but they had him put his underwear back on. I'll have Allicia send me some pictures that she took of Evelyn and Nico playing in the water. When Jeff asked the kids what they should call the place so they know what to say when referring to it, Nico said "Minnow!" So they're going to call it the Minnow Pond. I wonder if they saw minnows there and that's why he said that?

Monday afternoon was dance class. I drove Nico and Evelyn there and then pulled up a chair right outside the window so I could see them in the studio. They did clapping and skipping and hands above the head like a ballerina. It's a jazz/cheer/ballet combo class. I think for the last 2 minutes of class they must have done free dance, because all the kids were dancing all over the place doing whatever they wanted, instead of taking turns walking across the studio doing a specific move. It was fun to watch. I tried to study my aromatherapy flash cards, but I was too intrigued with the dance class to really pay attention to the cards.

Wednesday morning we took Evelyn with us to Target to buy Nico his skateboard for his birthday. He asked if Evelyn could come and I said Yes! Nico chose his skateboard, and wouldn't you know it, they had spiderman knee/elbow pads, so we bought them. Then we went to the park. See the video below for that.

I've told Nico over the past few weeks that skateboarding will take a lot of practice and that it's normal to fall down but that if he keeps at it he will get better and better.  He can push himself on the skateboard but he can't yet bring his pushing leg up to the skateboard and coast. That will take some practice!

While driving around with Evelyn, we were listening to our new VBS CD and it turns out that the first VBS that she went to this summer was one that used those very songs, so she knew all of them. I think this irked Nico a little bit and once Evelyn started singing along with the songs and telling Nico that they were HER songs, he told me to switch it to Sneaky Snake. haha... but then this evening I caught him singing Song #2. And he is very fond of Song #3, having said "This is my favorite song" the very first time he heard it. Thanks to Gma Russell for the CD! Nico told Evelyn several times that Gma Russell gave the CD to him.

Here is the promised VBS Video. But first, a story. Halfway through the VBS week, Nico started asking for a shiny armor costume for halloween. One with shiny boots, and a shield and a helmet. He kept saying he was going to ask Grandma to buy him a shiny armor costume for Halloween. Then I figured out what he was talking about. Shortly after singing one of the VBS songs, he turned to me and said "I want to get a shiny armor costume for Halloween" and I finally put the pieces together.

Hehe... you must watch the video to figure out what he was talking about... it's the last dancing scene and I spell it out for you there in case what they're singing about is hard to hear. Yes Nico, you can be that for Halloween!!

Then the Skateboard video

Grandma Sleepover, Mega Sports Camp

Last Friday was a very special day because Grandma Salisbury came to visit and she stayed the night in the suite upstairs! I had a henna booth to attend to that night and I was going to be home late, so Grandma took Nico up to the suite and played. Then he went to bed in one of the beds up there. He also got to play with Evelyn and some with Avery, too! Evelyn came upstairs and Nico and her put legos together for a while. I got home just before midnight and carried Nico downstairs to his own bed. Soon after I brought him downstairs, he woke up, crying and asking where Grandma was. I told him that she was sleeping but that he could snuggle with me on the couch (where I was sleeping). So, that's what we did.

The next morning, huzzah! We made apple muffins and brought one up to Grandma. We set the timer to go off when the mall opened, then we headed over there to do some shopping. Grandma took Nico to the toy store and came back with a spiderman toy.

It was a lot of fun, thank you Grandma!!!

"It's Mega Sports Camp Time!" This is what Nico says every morning when it's time to leave for VBS. Him and Evelyn have been having a great ol' time. They sing and dance and run around. I am volunteering there this week, I am the "Snack Coach" (everyone is a coach of something).. I bring the cookies and set up the snack table and hand out cookies, then clean everything up. I volunteered for this job because it would give me an opportunity to give the same snack to everyone because I could bring gluten free cookies! As the week progressed, people brought other snacks to share so now it is a mixture of gluten free and glutenous, but it is still pretty cool to say YES to Nico for most things.

I also chose Snack Coach because it doesn't require handling kids. Hey, if I can choose, I might as well not do something that will wear me out even more.... riiiight? ;)

They give out lots of candy. I told Allicia how much candy Evelyn ate the first day and she was worried how the afternoon would turn out. Well the next morning we saw. Evelyn had cut chunks of her bangs off the previous afternoon as part of her art. She was taping her hair to the pictures she was drawing. Very innovative! From then on out Evelyn was instructed to bring home all of her candy.

For Nico, I cut up some Nico-safe candies into smaller pieces and re-wrapped them in parchment paper. It totally worked.

I will have a video of VBS probably next week. This week has been so busy I have had barely any extra time. I actually caught on tape when Nico was called on to answer a question during one of the "rallies" they had in the main sanctuary. He loves talking into a microphone. He always raises his hand though he has never known the answer to the question they asked. And here are some of his responses to the questions:

"I'm going to tell you a story first. I had an ant, and a leaf, and the next morning, the ant had died!"

"Uhmm....Jesus died on the cross" (this is the one I caught on video)

"I went to the cabin, and there was an elk, and we saw the elk, and then the elk ran away!"

"The storm rains down on the ground" (this was on topic! The question was about storms in our life)

Everyone is so encouraging of him and they clap or say "Right On!"

Then with the dancing, oh the dancing!! He is enjoying that part of VBS so much.

The dance class with Evelyn, I thought started this week but is actually next week, next Monday. There is actually another dance class I came across, Hip Hop, for Nico's age, that is also on Mondays, right before the one with Evelyn. I am seriously considering signing him up for that one too, since I'm pretty sure that's his favorite kind of music to dance to. But, it would be a long afternoon, with 1 1/2 hours of dancing. Maybe I'll hold off on that for now.

I heard back from Nico's doc. The blood tests came back ALL clear... nothing was amiss. His food allergy tests were all negative. I think we'll sit on this info for a while before we pursue anything else.  Haven't heard from the ultrasound place yet to set up his ultrasound.

Not sure much else has happened this week.

OH WAIT!!! Something very important happened this week!! Look at the picture and guess:

We paid off our first debt!!! A total of $11,000 since last September! I can't believe it happened so quickly! We are celebrating by going to Red Robin on Sunday. We already made a new thermometer for our next debt. We're on our way :)

Ok now that HAS to be it... I'm pretty sure there's nothing else.

Pool time!

Last day of Nico's Literacy Program was last Friday. Nico was excited for his last day. I don't think he enjoyed the program as much as he enjoyed any of his preschools. After we left, we went straight to Pojo's! We met one of his friends Lazarus there.

Then the 4th of July! We chose sparklers and Pop-its. Nico thought it was "puppets", so when we got home he kept saying that soon he was going to open up the puppets, but I had no idea he was saying it wrong until he said to me "I wonder what animal is in there? A little puppet." He bent his index finger up and down like there was a puppet on it. So then I explained it to him.

Guy ducking while Nico throws Pop-its

We did a "random act of kindness" on Monday. While Jeff and Allicia were out of town, we cleaned some of their house. Nico helped me pick up stuff off the floor and helped me with the vacuum cleaner. Also on Monday we set up the swimming pool. Slathered sun screen on (forgot his nose, whoops! It's scabbed over now), and jumped in! I even went in with Nico. I retreated after a while underneath the canopy. It was very pleasant, having a place to sit in the shade and study while Nico jumped around in the pool. We played in the pool twice that day.

From this picture you can also see our cantaloupe plant growing on the left in a pot. 

Tuesday we went to see G.G.! It was great to catch up. The next time we see her will be for Nico's birthday party on August 1st! I need to sit down and plan it. Nico has ideas all the time for what he wants at his birthday party. I can't remember them all.

After we left G.G.'s house, we went to a doctor's appointment for Nico. We are on the road to figuring out what is going on with his tummy. They took some blood to get the normal bloodwork, plus a panel of 22 foods to see if he is allergic to any of them. The doc said that this test, if done on young children, has a tendency to have some false negatives, because sometimes a child's body isn't producing the antibodies to the food (yet?) So, the test won't be complete, BUT, if anything shows up positive then hey, it was worth it. We'll also do an abdominal ultrasound to check for anything abnormal. We're covering our bases. The doc said that getting these tests done helps to give us confidence when we tell Nico "It's going to be okay" whenever he has a tummy ache. I liked that way of looking at it. Rule out all the bad stuff, so we can know better what we're dealing with. The doc said we may want to go see an allergist eventually too.

Nico was brave getting his blood drawn. Earlier that day Nico had asked me to clarify how mosquitoes suck blood from our body (he is very knowledgeable about insects after his literacy program, that was the theme!) So I told him what I knew. I told him a blood draw would be similar, except it would hurt for a little bit but then it would be over. And he'd get to watch the blood come out of his body. The nurse had to poke two arms (Nico insisted she do his right arm, so she tried that one first even though she wanted to do the left one. The right one didn't work, left a bruise, so she moved to the left one) Nico's face wrinkled up when she poked him, but otherwise he was so brave! Unlike Mommy, who had to drop down to the floor to keep from fainting. The nurse asked "Does Mommy need a glass of water?" Hehe...

After we left, I told him that he was SO BRAVE! And Nico said "I was not brave, I was MAD!" hahaha!!! I asked him to expound on his feelings and he said he was mad because the nurse poked him with a needle. :) We went straight to Freddies afterward to buy him a toy :) (not just because he was mad, but because we had planned to get him a new toy after the blood draw)

Wednesday, what a day! Nico and I sat down to do some legos after Guy had gone to work and after the dishes were done. But then I remembered! Nico doesn't have a tooth brush! So I said "Come on! Let's go to the Market to get you a tooth brush!" Nico was all for it, so we got our shoes on and walked over to M & W Market. As we were walking there the wind started, slowly. After we bought his toothbrush and left, it was a whirlwind outside. There was so much sand and dust blowing everywhere that I could barely see through my squinting, so we went back in to the M & W to wait it out a bit. After sitting for a few minutes Nico said: "I like wind! Let's go!" so we left. And thank goodness we did! It started raining on the way home and a few minutes after making it through our door, the torrents started. SO MUCH RAIN! Nico insisted that we finish putting the lego together with the lights off, and just the desk lamp on. So we did. Every time we heard the thunder, we jumped and yelled from surprise.

I looked outside and saw that the pool was being blown away, so I ran outside, flipped it over the right way and put a heavy pot inside it. When I got back inside I was very soaked. The canopy had waterfalls coming off it which I had to walk through.

Then we went outside in the front to play in the rain with Evelyn. They played in the water in the street, I have fond memories of doing this when I was younger too, when our street would flood. It wasn't very deep for them, and Nico didn't really get IN the water, but he played around it while Evelyn was in it.

They were playing very nicely, and I was chatting with Jeff on the porch, when we heard a CRUNCH, CLANG! coming from the side of the house near the clubhouse. I thought Avery may have hurt himself but I looked around and saw him just fine. We peeked around the corner and there in front of the clubhouse was our canopy, collapsed in on itself. The water must have pooled on top until it couldn't hold anymore. It was a mess! This picture is after I took off the canopy material.



Papa mentioned that there might be replacement parts that we could buy. And indeed there are! Nico and I took some of the canopy apart today and will work on getting the rest taken apart soon, so we can find out which parts are salvageable.

Nico has been making forts and for two nights he has slept in them. Such fun.

Nothing else to report at this time. Until next week!

Thoughtfulness, Bike Trail, Hot!

On Friday Nico rode his own bike to school instead of the trailer bike. While we were locking up his bike, someone that Nico calls "Grandma" walked by and stopped to talk to us (she was also one that stopped to talk to us in the video last week). She told me that I was raising a very sweet and thoughtful boy. When they were in line and leaving the classroom one day, Nico noticed Grandma lagging behind at the end of the line so he left his spot and went back and grabbed her hand to walk with her. I like hearing stuff like this!

We tried to beat the heat on Saturday by going early to the bike trail (aka Strider Park), but it was still super hot and muggy. It was the first time Nico tried this bike trail with his actual bike instead of his Strider. It took some getting used to because pedaling over the bumps is hard. I pushed him up the bumps sometimes because he lost momentum. But then he would yell (playfully?) "I'm going too fast I'm going too fast!!!!!" This is where he also learned to back pedal to brake his bike. Before this he was stopping himself by dragging the tips of his toes on the ground. 

We did the trail twice.

Sunday, Guy woke up very early due to a Nico outburst. 2 PM maybe. It actually gave us time to sort through a lot of Nico's toys and do some reorganizing and purging. It was great. We even pulled out a bin from storage that had toys in it that Nico hadn't seen since last September. He was very excited, and so, for You and Me Time one morning, he wanted to put together and take apart and put together his airplane toy, all while I played with his other toy that made a different airplane fly around a track. You can see the video at the end of this post.

We had some very hot days here this past week. It was hot! 107 degrees I think on Sunday. We had a heat advisory to stay indoors in an air conditioned building. Our swamp cooler was working hard but we still had some trouble keeping the temperature comfortable in here. We set up our canopy out front yesterday and that actually seems to keep the house a bit cooler. It catches some of the sun for us. This weekend we will probably set up the little kiddie pool underneath it. 

This is the last week of Nico's literacy program. Tomorrow is his last day! He has a week free before VBS Mega Sports Camp starts, which will last one week and Evelyn will be going with him. He is excited about that, and also the dance class that they are also taking together that starts soon. He likes to do stuff with Evelyn.

Guy left work a little bit ago and came home because he wasn't feeling well. Here's hoping he feels better soon! :(

That's it for today. Until next time!