On Sunday night, Allicia and Jeff had friends over who had designed a Virtual Reality game that they let everyone try. Nico and Guy both had a turn (I declined due to being a tad motion sick from watching Nico play.. hehe) Nico was a champ, and played really well (see video at end). He had a leaf blower and got to blow leaves and other things with his leaf blower. If you point it at the ground then you fly. Then he played one where there were a bunch of things you can throw.
Also on Sunday night, Guy and I and Jeff and Allicia sat downstairs to watch a part of the first release of the new MST3K movies. Since Guy supported the kick starter, he got early access to the first episode. Guy and I watched the entire episode earlier on Sunday, but that evening we shared part of it with Jeff and Allicia.
We said goodbye to our friends Aadam and Sammy and Tiffanie on Tuesday. They moved out of state and we will miss them!
We got the pictures back from the henna photo shoot. It's nice to have those pictures of the 4 kid crew.
He entered the Adams Elementary Yearbook Cover Contest.
He drew two wolves on a cliff howling at the moon and then two bears down below with some trees.
Sittin'
Nico is on #9 of the Treehouse books.
Here's the virtual reality video! (notice the newly painted and carpeted downstairs!!!)
Last Friday was St. Patrick's Day. Allicia bought all the kids something green to wear to school. Nico forgot his green bowtie so I brought it to him as soon as I got home from dropping him off. He was very grateful. Here are all the kiddos after school while walking home.
On Saturday morning I went up to the cabin and Guy and Nico went to the Photronics Phun Day. There was a scavenger hunt, a tour, and he got to try on the bunny suits you have to wear into the Fab.
After they were done they met me up at the cabin because this was the last get together before the Grandparents Salisbury move to their new home. It was good to say goodbye to the place. They are officially moving tomorrow (Friday!). Here's to new adventures!
Sunday was church and Bible Study, and sitting between the two was a birthday party for Ivy, who turned 2 years old on the first day of Spring! It was a rainbow party. Yummy food, colorful streamers. They held it under the covered porch. We had to leave early to get to Bible study on time.
We are planning a garage sale to sell some things and save up for a car. We have a lot of stuff that needs to go. We plan to spend a lot of time during Spring Break decluttering. Just tonight we had delivered a wardrobe we purchased off craigslist. This will help with the clutter, it will replace our hanging closet, and it has doors to close so you don't have to see the stuff inside it. I am very pleased with it. One of the doors even has a mirror.
Picture of Nico at dinner tonight drinking his milk. Thursday is always turkey burger day! His favorite. He eats it one small teeny bite at a time so it lasts longer. He then tells Daddy - "Eat small bites so it lasts longer!"
He has been reading...
Captain Underpants Magic Treehouse books
These are chapter books and he's been reading them outloud several times a day, he even takes them outside while he's playing and reads them to Sammy and Aadam. If he doesn't know a word he either guesses what it is and moves on, or he asks what it is. He sometimes comes into the bathroom while I'm taking a shower and sits on the toilet to read me a book.
There is a Dogman comic where the evil cat takes away all the books in the world and all the people get really dumb. Then when the books come back, they get smart again. So Nico says that he is getting smarter and smarter because he reads.
I forgot a few pictures last week! On the Friday that Nico had off, Guy came home from work early and we attempted to hike the Table Rock trail but when we arrived there there were signs saying the trail was closed due to mud. Nico was very sad about it, he was looking forward to hiking and spying out birds with our binoculars. He had packed his fanny pack with a Lara bar, sunflower seeds, and pistachios.
Guy looking up the trail report after we saw the signs
We got back in the car and drove instead to the library where we played two board games. One of them was called "Secret Code 13+4" where you are trying to pass through lasers to get to the end of the game, and each laser has a number. You roll 6 dice and try in some way to get that number by adding, multiplying, subtracting, whatever it takes. We all enjoyed that one.
Ok now on to this past week!
Whenever I see birds, I take a picture, even if it's a goose, so that I can show Nico and ask him "What kind of bird is this?"
We sold our car on Saturday. We posted it on craigslist and 30 minutes later had a call about it. Then he came over and bought it right then. It was so rushed we didn't have much time to think and plan about what we needed to do to actually sign the title over to him. We signed the title over right but forgot two things - to remove the license plates and to detach the release of liability from the title so we could mail it in. We were very anxious over the next few days as we tried to get it all sorted out. But, it is all sorted out now.. phew!
On Tuesday was Nico's yearly IEP meeting. Guy and I arrived a bit early so we sat on chairs in the hallway that just happened to have a straight shot to where Nico was sitting in his class. He never saw us so I had to take a picture.
The IEP meeting went well, Nico will continue to receive speech therapy in 2nd grade. His speech therapist said that Nico has come a long way since starting in Kindergarten, and even in this last year. He is very polite, has a sense of humor, and is always looking out for his friends and helping them. It was nice to hear all the good things they had to say about him.
I tried a new recipe this week, a quiche with sweet potato crust. Nico liked it. That is a great thing. Honestly, a lot of the recipes I try are flops!
We made the hard decision to cancel our trip to Arlington over Spring Break. Due to our car situation we think it's best. We will really miss being able to hang with the Grandparents Russell at their house and also just being in Arlington. We may try to take a trip in June, we will see how things go!
Over Spring break we plan instead to find some places around Boise to visit. We are thinking Birds of Prey and perhaps the Bruneau Sand Dunes.
Nico was reading "Heidi Heckelbeck Makes a Wish" to Sammy and Aadam today, Tiffanie took a picture for me. They were laughing and laughing.
Not much to report this week! Nico has been hanging out with Sammy and Aadam at their house.
Tiffanie says they get along really well when they play with building-type toys. But they tend to bicker a lot more when they play cars or Grosseries.
Every day we play the bird matching game at least once, usually more than once. He notices birds and pictures of birds now. He noticed how many cardinals GG had in her house last week, on her rug, some of her figurines were cardinals, and some in her kitchen. If he sees birds he asks what kind of bird it is. He then says whether it's in the bird matching game or not. When we play the game, when we're down to the last match, we have to guess what the match is before flipping it over. Sometimes we know right off the bat, but other times we lay out all the cards that each of us has and then we go through the little pamphlet that came with the game and turn over each bird as Nico calls it. When he gets to the bird that neither of us has, we have found the last match! There was once we separated all the females from the males on either side of the table, that was fun.
On Saturday Guy took Nico to the library and they had trains there!
Nico has been reading Bird and Squirrel comics. Guy has been reading him an interesting and gross book about mummies. He has been watching the movie Coraline on the iPad, that and the new Garfield cartoon and Pokemon. Guy and Nico have been playing video games downstairs, he played Super Mario Kart for the first time. Guy later told me that he thinks we started Nico playing video games too LATE! hah. Nico gets frustrated and walks away when he can't play well, Guy's reasoning is that if he was younger he would just push buttons and not care :)
On Wednesday I did a chalk mural on the wall at Awakenings Coffee House. They have an artist wall and local artists can do murals and they keep them up on the wall for a month. It took me four hours but it was super fun. They gave me free tea! And a free latte for Guy as I was leaving.
Last weekend on Friday and Saturday Guy took care of Nico as I was at the "Women Ignite Idaho" conference and trade show. I had a henna booth at the trade show and was attending the conference. It was fun!
Guy made Pad Thai for himself and Nico on Friday night, and on Saturday they made a HUGE sandwich. They had been planning this for a few days, ever since Nico read one of his new Pete the Cat books that Grandma Russell sent him (thank you Grandma!!) He got a set of 5 Pete the Cat readers. And, he can read them! In one of the books, Pete the Cat builds this HUGE sandwich with all sorts of things on it. So Nico made a list of stuff he wanted on his sandwich. Not everything that Pete had, but things that Nico could eat.
Apparently Nico ate a few things from the sandwich for lunch, came back a few hours later and ate some more, a few hours later and finished it off.
Because of my day on Saturday, we had pizza on Sunday instead. We made spider pizzas with olives!
Nico's
Guy's (his salami is under the cheese)
On Saturday, Guy took Nico to the library and Nico picked out Shaun the Sheep on DVD and that's what we watched on Sunday while eating pizza.
Tonight was the Boo Bash at Nico's school. We walked there with the whole crew.
Guy had to be at the church at 6:30 and the Boo Bash was at 6. So we got in there quick and made sure to get our polaroid before Guy had to book it.
We left the Boo Bash at 7 PM and about 40 minutes of that was spent at the Cakewalk. Last year Nico won within 2 minutes, this year took a bit longer, but he persisted! They called his number and we hustled over the gluten free table and he picked out a chocolate bar. Yum! I have already agreed to let him eat half of it tomorrow after breakfast and the other half after lunch.
Friday we invited Sammy and Aadam over to play inside the main house! Jeff and Allicia and crew were out of town so we used their living room for a play date. They colored and wrote books and had a grand time. It was nice to have the space available to invite them inside!
That afternoon they played out front on our table.
On Saturday morning we went to see GG. Guy was able to come with us because we did it on a Saturday, and it was great! As always really fun to see her and talk about what she's been up to and what she has planned in the coming weeks. Nico brought over his Grosseries to show GG. We may have left them there, in fact! I still need to call her and ask if we left them.
On Sunday Guy helped at the sound booth again at church. I think it will become a regular thing!
Monday was Columbus Day, which we affectionally renamed Columbo's Day, a day to watch an episode of Columbo. We picked one of our favorites. Guy and I watched while Nico was in school.
Monday started Guy's VACATION week! He took the whole week off from work. While he's been home, we have sorted through stuff, taken a load to the Youth Ranch to give away, watched lots of Netflix, bought lots of snacks, eaten lots of snacks, and on Wednesday night we even had a PARTY! We bought cupcakes to celebrate Guy's birthday and went to Trader Joe's and filled our carts with all those snacky items and dips that always look so good but you never buy because, well, they can get expensive! But really, Trader Joe's is cheap, although spending $120 on snack items was really a piece of cake for us. We are enjoying blowing all our money this paycheck.
The party on Wednesday was just under the covered porch and we had Jeff & Allicia, plus Tiffanie over. The guests that are staying in the suite above us, Vanessa and her 3 year old Ansel also came to the party, they've become good friends of the family. She bought us flowers. We ate all the snackie items from Trader Joe's, then cupcakes. Finger food heaven! Sammy is also gluten free, and Tiffanie told me that at the party he was like a child in Costco eating all the samples except this time he could actually eat them (because all our food was gluten free!) We sent them home with hummus and salami and veggies for Sammy's lunch. He is growing into quite the foodie and only 8 years old.
I captured only one picture. You can't see the rest of the people/kids that were at the tables, but you CAN see a small section of the dips and chips and crackers we got.
We purchased Nico his Star Wars Lego that he has wanted for a very long time. We ordered it last week and it was delivered on Monday. We opened it up and started putting it together straight away.
Before opening the box
Just starting out
Getting close to the halfway mark...
It is not together yet, but we are close.
Random pictures. Nico is tall enough to ride his blue bike now!
Picture by Nico
It is fun having Guy home. He takes Nico to school with me and picks him up with me. Guy even got to spend some time working on a project - building a card shuffler with legos, using a lego motor to power it. Want to see how it works?
On Saturday we had a special day that started at the Sensory Friendly Movie that was showing Finding Dory. We took Evelyn with us, and Tiffanie and Aadam and Sammy also came with us. Afterward, Nico and I drove out to the Farmstead in Meridian to celebrate Bruce's birthday!! The Farmstead has a corn maze, hay rides, corn pits, and a bunch of other fun activities to do.
I lost track of Nico once and almost freaked out. He had taken his shoes off to go jump on the bouncy pad and I was talking to family and turned around and he wasn't on the bouncy pad anymore and his shoes were gone. Ack! We deployed the forces (my brothers) and the special forces (sisters in law and Grandma) and we went searching. Nico turned out to be at the attraction right next to the bouncy pad, which was the zip line. I looked over and he was ON one of the zip lines. I had a talk with him. But then an hour later I noticed him quietly leaving where he was and walking away from us and then running toward an attraction across the field. I ran after him and had another talk with him.
Nico, Bruce, Rory and Lexie
Check out the video below of Nico going down the slide with Bruce. It was a fun time, we were exhausted after! We came home and made our Saturday night pizza and discussed what we should watch while eating. Nico chose Penguins the movie.
Sunday Guy went early to church to practice doing the sound board. He has been going on Thursday nights during worship practice to learn how to do it. And this Sunday he watched while someone else did part of it, then he took over. He did a good job.
"No Spendtember" is over, so Nico and I took advantage of the two days off that he has and we went shopping today! We got him a Halloween costume, and a few other needed things from the store. Nico spent some of his money on some Grosseries (like garbage pail kids, but figurines, groceries that have molded over, like "Disgusting Mustard" which is a mustard bottle with green goop coming out the top).
After we got home he put the costume on and wanted to show Aadam and Sammy right away but they weren't home, so he sat on a stool reading the Rube Goldberg book outside in the driveway, waiting for them to return (he gave up before they did)
Then we had a treat and went to Boise Juice Company and tried their Pumpkin Smoothie bowl. It was so good! Nico also chose a fresh beet juice with carrots and apples, it was very tasty and he drank most of it. And he was convinced my pumpkin smoothie bowl was ice cream.
Then this afternoon he went over to Aadam and Sammy's house. They watched Hotel Transylvania 2. Tiffanie posted these two photos of them having fun:
That's pretty much it for this week.
Here's the video I told you about, Bruce and Nico going down the slide then Leah follows.
We are officially debt free! We paid our last debt payment yesterday.
Nico colored in the chart and asked "Are we going to move to a new house?" I told him that eventually we would.
Guy wasn't able to come on Monday night to Financial Peace University because of a fever. He has been struggling with colds for the past few months.
Last Friday we went to see GG! Because Nico is now in school all day, we didn't visit in the morning. Instead we drove over right after school. We scheduled our next visit for a Saturday and I think we'll try doing that from now on! This will also give Guy a chance to come with us! It was great to see her. She gave Nico one of her peaches and he loved it. She cut it up for him and he ate it while watching a show on tv. She loaded us up with pureed tomatoes and another thing of relish. We love to use those tomatoes for pizza sauce. Tomorrow I am making a roasted red pepper and tomato bisque soup and I cannot wait to see how different it will taste using her tomatoes.
Here's a picture of Nico and Aadam and Evelyn all playing together inside Aadam's room. Nico loves going inside their house.
I also wanted to take some time to record one of Nico's favorite ways to spend "You and Me Time". With me. He likes doing other things with Daddy during their You and Me Time, but with me this is his consistent choice. The Spring Fair consists of a green van, a green truck, and Thomas the train.
Thomas has a trailer that holds a sign that says "Spring Fair" on it.
The windmill and the sign are set up and then they dance while the light on the sign flashes. This is the way it always begins.
Then, while they are dancing, something happens. A helicopter will bring over an item and drop it right in front of them ...
... and then the rest of the time is spent interacting with that object. It's become a way for Nico to share things with these car characters and talk about some of his favorite things. After his birthday the helicopter brough legos. Conversations go like this: (these things are said by alternating cars)
Woah look there's a helicopter over there, it's carrying something really big. I wonder what it is?!
He's bringing it over here, watch out, he's dropping it!
WOAH! It looks like a book
Can you read, green van? Tell us what is says!
"Dot to dot book"
COOL!
Wait look the helicopter is coming back
Watch out it's dropping something!
AH!
Look it's a pencil!
I bet we use the pencil with the dot-to-dot book.
I love dot-to-dot books! Who wants to go first?
For a time the helicopter would drop a deck of cards and they'd play flap-jack or solitaire. It changes to include the latest interest that Nico has.
It's been such an interesting time where Nico gets to share something that he loves with three very excited cars that are super interested in whatever it is he drops in front of them. Friends that are excited about everything you show them are pretty sweet!
Today, the helicopter dropped a flashlight (recently acquired gift from Aadam and Sam) and when they opened up the flashlight they found it had a treasure map inside. So, they went on a treasure hunt into a dark cave.
Video of us "walking" home from school. Aadam is in front, the Evelyn, then Nico.
