Chess Tournament and Sushi

On Friday our friend Brianna visited from Pullman, WA and we ate dinner with her. She brought Nico a book of birds in North America and he sat in bed and read it that night. He wants to try some of the experiments in there, like making a bird feeder out of a 2 liter bottle (looks very hack-ish, right up his alley).

Nico had a chess tournament on Saturday at Smoky Mountain Pizza. He LOVES these chess tournaments. Before we left this one he asked, "When is the next one??" He won 4 out of 7 games, he is improving! His last tournament he won 1 out of 4 games. Everyone received a trophy, and his was 2nd place again. He seemed discouraged over this and said he wants to practice more so that he's better next time.

Instead of making pizza at home while Nico was at his tournament, we ordered it! We tried a new pizza place, Extreme pizza, with unique signature pizzas. Guy chose 2 of them and had a half-n-half pizza. He said it was good! We watched Burn Notice while eating dinner. Then I picked the buddy up. 

Sunday the kiddos put on a "show" for us in the backyard that included remote controlled cars and fireworks (smoke bombs and sparklers). 

Ivy sitting on my lap during the show.

Doing his chess homework. He answers the questions on the paper then sets the board up to mimic the problem.

At Evelyn's birthday party in December Nico ate sushi. He now says it's his favorite food, so I thought I'd try to make it. I have done it in the past but haven't for a while. We got a sushi kit to help us do it, but the cutting guide really made a mess of the first roll I tried to cut.

So I abandoned the cutting guide and the rest of the rolls turned out looking fine. These rolls just had cucumber, avocado, and carrot in them. No fish. Nico says, "These don't taste like the ones at Evelyn's party" Hehe... I will keep trying. There are a few ingredient upgrades I will do that may help.

For the next month, Avery has parkour classes in the afternoon on Thursdays. Evelyn stays back at the house with us while Allicia takes Avery and Ivy with her. Evelyn and Nico played Minecraft for a while and then Evelyn sat at the table with us and we all ate dinner together. Oh Nico was so excited to have a friend for dinner! Then afterward they had a chance to play in the clubhouse (rare opportunity!) They chose to play cars. In this picture Nico is pretending to be a cow while eating his sprouts.

Nico checked out Big Nate from the library at school today and is reading it in bed right now. It's not quite a graphic novel but it's somewhere between that and a chapter book. He says he doesn't like it because there is some text that doesn't have a picture :)

That's it for this week!