New Bike!

Saturday was Bruce's birthday party! Nico and I went up to the cabin that afternoon and enjoyed seeing family and celebrating with Bruce. There was even gluten free Nico pizza!

We had to leave around 2:30 to be back in time to wake Guy up for work. After waking him up, I packed up my henna stuff and went over to the neighborhood's block party. I did free henna for a few hours that night for everyone who showed up. Jeff and Allicia handled Nico for me, they came to the block party and Nico got to jump on the bouncy house. He even came over to my henna booth and got a henna tattoo. He usually wants it wiped off as soon as I get it on, and this time was no exception. I got home after 8 PM that night and Nico was still up, so we snuggled a bit and he told me that he was never going to jump in a bouncy house again because he jumped so much that it made him sick.

On Tuesdays I have started doing something new in the evenings - Tap Dance! This past week was my second class. It is a lot of fun. Nico likes my tap shoes, but told me that he doesn't tap dance because he's a boy. So Guy took him to Youtube videos of Danny Kay, Fred Astere, and Nico watched them several times and danced along.

Still no word from Guy's job. Ho hum!

Today Nico and I ventured to a kids consignment shop to buy winter clothes. We got him some boots and a coat and some long pants and long shirts. We even bought him a Halloween costume - Raphael the teenage mutant ninja turtle.

He was pretty set that he wanted to be the Armor of God for Halloween but we couldn't find an armor suit there, so I let him look at the other costumes while I looked at clothes, and this is what he found! It's not in very good shape after taking it out of the bag, but, it'll do!

Then on the way out we saw a bike that he liked, and so I considered... his current bike has a flat tire and is so small. Instead of fixing the tire, why don't we just buy a new bike? :) And this bike was signed by Kristin Armstrong (the bike park that we go to sometimes was named after her). And this was also a Trek bike, brand new costing $299, and we bought it for $32. It does have a non-functioning right brake and the handle bars need to be tightened because they turn, but Jeff has offered to fix the bike for us! We took the bike out to the park tonight, Evie followed on a tricycle. Nico took the park loop a good many times and got used to riding it. Unfortunately he cannot get up on the bike without help. He tried several times but he can't touch the ground and sit on the seat at the same time so it will require some serious skills to be able to do it. He'll get it eventually. But this also means that landings are sometimes dangerous. I told him to kick his foot out and fall on his foot after he stops. This usually means that the bike also falls too. He had a few crashes, and thankfully I was there at the right moments to prevent the serious crashes from happening. God's angels were also at hand :) 

AND OH MY GOODNESS! I don't think I ever mentioned the hot air balloon chase we did a few weekends ago (September 5th). How could I forget! A hot air balloon landed nearby and so me and the kids raced there and got there just in time for Evelyn to get to go inside the balloon and see the fire. Nico wanted to stand back. There's a video below too. Two videos today! One of biking, one of hot air balloon.

Video!

G.G., Bible Study, and the ickies

Nico had a lot of fun with Grandma while I was gone! Thanks so much for watching him, Mom! 

I returned home Saturday night, and saw Nico the next morning. He woke up while I had gone to the bathroom and I came back into the clubhouse with an angry-voiced Nico saying "Mommy! Mommy!" because I wasn't there. Hehe.. he was grumpy but I made him smile and then we snuggled for a long while in the bed before getting up.

Sunday we had church and then that night was the first night of Bible Study this year. We dropped Nico off at the big kids group and Guy and I went to our group. It was great to see everyone again. We had to go around the room and introduce ourselves (even though we knew most of the people) and say something interesting about us that nobody would know. Mine was that Guy and I did a lot of puzzles together while we were dating and that a few years ago we did a 13,000 piece one. When it was Guy's turn, he told everyone that he likes to try to identify sandwiches from long distances. Hehe.

We haven't heard anything about Guy's job yet, but he did tell me that he got a "wink" from the hiring manager. Not sure if I already mentioned that. Now we're just waiting... and waiting... and waiting...

On Tuesday morning we went to see G.G. and Nico wanted to bring his checkers game to play with her. He brought it with us and G.G. taught him how to play. G.G. also let him feed Scamper two treats, and Scamper ate them right off his hand, to help him learn that Scamper wouldn't hurt him.

On Wednesday morning we went to the park with Allicia and crew. We usually do this Monday but on Monday we both desperately needed to go grocery shopping, so we postponed it until Wednesday. The plus to doing it on Wednesday was that there were no lawn mowers.

For the past few days Nico has been complaining of tummy aches before, during, after bed and before, during, after eating. Wednesday morning he only had a few bites of pancake and started whining. After lunch he told me he was sick and needed to stay home from school. Hmm.. I sent him anyway. He did fine at school but didn't eat anything when he came home, and right before bed he got sick once. He felt so much better afterward, and slept until morning, when he ate some food and then again for lunch. I kept him home from school. He skipped dinner again tonight and though he's telling me he doesn't have a tummy ache, he really has no appetite for food. He ate a few monster teeth before going to bed just now, but wasn't very interested. He had a temp of 99.3 earlier. Not that that's significant, but sometimes that can mean something.

I'm hoping he'll be okay tonight and wake up his chipper self tomorrow. He does seem to have a runny nose, so perhaps that's related.

That's it for this week... hopefully next week we'll have news from Guy's job!

Interview and Salt Lake City

Guy had his interview last Friday at 3 PM. He tells me it went well, but we are still waiting to hear the results of it! 

The rest of the week was really spent me getting ready for my trip to SLC, I had a lot of last minute stuff to do. So Nico came with me running errands, and he played a new game on his iPad. I download free apps, but only the ones that are only temporarily free and used to be $4+, because those are the good ones, the ones that don't have any ads or are silly. There are two Dr. Panda apps I've downloaded this way and they are awesome!! The latest one, Nico gets to drive around animals in cars and construction equipment to run errands around the town. He has enjoyed it.

I left to come to Salt Lake City yesterday after I dropped Nico off at school. My mom came in and picked him up from school at 3:15. I arrived last night here around 6 PM. I have had a good time so far and I've been really enjoying seeing the pictures Grandma has sent me. It looks like they are having a good time and that makes me happy! Nico gets to sleep upstairs in the suite with Grandma.

Here he is being silly in the morning. 

Waiting for their pizza at Chicago Connection. Looks like they're playing Tic Tac Toe!

Waiting for the bell to ring at school

And now I'm remembering, on Tuesday he didn't want to go to school and seemed very tired and I admit I was worried that he was sick or something. I could not get him to get into line after the bell rang and he kept whining and squirming around on the floor. I told him that he wouldn't get to play on his iPad after school if he didn't get into line and he said "Ok!" and happily got into line and was perfectly fine. Then he ran up to me and gave me his usual hug and kiss and got back into line. 

I love that he has randomly started doing that when he says goodbye at school. Hug and kiss. He asks for "rough hugs" which means I squeeze him really hard. He started saying this because I started asking for soft hugs or gentle hugs. He says "You like soft hugs and I like rough hugs!" Sometimes we forget to do the hug/kiss routine but I love it when he remembers. Kind of like how he came up with the idea to count to 3 before praying. He still does that every morning. We have to have our eyes open while he counts, and then we have to close them when he starts praying. If he sees that we have our eyes closed while he's counting, then he has to start over.

Ok off to bed for me!

Until next week!

Church Picnic and Holding Ivy

Forgot again! I finally added Thursday night blog updating to my calendar, so I will remember next week :)

Last Friday was the last Friday of my henna booth.  Nico got to spend the night at the cabin again! And I went to pick him up on Saturday. Lily was there along with Jeremy. We had good food and a good time, again!! Thanks Pa & Ma!

On Sunday was the church picnic! I told Nico about it just the morning of, and that there was going to be a Bounce House Water Slide! He said "Oh my goodness, I love one of those!" he was very excited (side note about water slides. On his first day of school, we were halfway out the door when he turned around and said "MOMMY! Don't forget my swimsuit, where's my swimsuit?" He thought that he got to go to the waterslide behind his school as a matter of course during the school day. Oh woe is Nico! I should have seen this coming, remember his Preschool graduation? "What is the thing you're most excited about school next year?" His answer was "The water slide behind my school!")

We brought potato salad. It was a very pleasant afternoon. Nico got soaked from head to toe in his clothes. Then we changed him into his swim trunks because they were the only dry thing we had. That was only after he was done on the water slide. They had free Ben and Jerries Ice Cream there, so I told Nico we could stop by the Co-op on the way home and get him some ice cream and some cones.

Check out video below of water slide plus "Big Bubble" fun!

Sunday night we watched Ivy for a few hours. Nico loves to do "This little piggy" on her, either her toes or her fingers. I didn't catch it quick enough to include in the video at the end.

On Tuesday we went to Big-O Tires to get our car checked out, looks like we needed new tires. So we got them. Also an oil change. I am going out of town next week to Salt Lake City for the doTERRA convention so we wanted to make sure the car was good. My mom will be staying in the suite upstairs to watch Nico while I am gone.

Thursday was picture day at school. Nico picked out his shirt, it was a new football shirt that he had picked out from Kohl's a few weeks ago. Thursday night was parents orientation. We got to hear the principal speak and then we all separated and went to our child's classrooms to hear their teachers speak. I love the principal and I am so happy that Nico is at Adam's!!! His teacher is great too! She told us what they do every day, what they work on through the school year, and she also told us her pet peeve - constantly changing how your child is picked up from school. That is, whether he'll be on the bus or picked up in person. Thankfully Nico will never take the bus so we don't have to worry about it :)

Read-a-thon is going on at Nico's school soon! It's a fundraiser. You can pledge an amount of money you'll donate per minute Nico reads a book (this would be me or Guy reading to him), up to a certain amount, or you can just do a lump sum donation. If you'd like to participate and pledge an amount per minute (the Read-a-thon lasts for 2 weeks so this will be the total minutes read over a two week period), then let me know and I'll write it on the form! Payments aren't collected until the end of September, after it's over and we know how many minutes he's read. His goal is 210 minutes which is 15 minutes per day.

Video time!