Mother's Day, and Pokemon

On Friday after school, Nico's teacher texted me this picture and said Happy Mother's Day, she also said "I love this boy!" I sure do, to!

Saturday was a laid back day. We labeled some more product to ship to Amazon, and the main house had "Odd Saturday" again, where they invite friends over for games and food. Nico and Guy have been participating in that when it happens. Then they cut out early so we can make pizza. My movie choice was "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day". It reminded me a lot of the Wimpy Kid movies, funny. It has Steve Carell in it.

Sunday Nico let me open the gift he had brought home from school on Friday. He joked that I had to wait until after church, but I convinced him to let me open it before church. It was a clay plate in the shape of his hand. I love it! I put it on the kitchen windowsill.

At church they had a photo booth for mothers and children for Mother's Day. Here's ours.

Swimming lessons on Monday. His class is much bigger this time.

On Tuesday we tried something new. We went to the Pokemon League at the library after school. They had a bunch of tables set up with mats to play Pokemon on and a bunch of Pokemon decks available to play with if you don't have your own. In the picture, Nico is playing with one of the facilitators. The rest of the kids you can see off to the right on the floor, they're going through their binders of Pokemon cards and trading them with each other. Nico didn't bring his binder, so he didn't participate. He will next time! If Nico signs up to be a "Pokemon Trainer" online, then he'll get free prizes for coming to the club at the library. We will do that! Nico and I, and Nico and Guy have been playing Pokemon at home this past week. He also brings his Pokemon bin (which holds all his decks for playing) over to Merek's house sometimes when he visits.

That evening, Nico didn't have Cub Scouts, so Guy and Nico were able to come with me to Liz's graduation (Bruce & Rory's mom). She graduated from U of I with her Bachelors. It was exciting to see!! We sat next to Papa and Grandma Salisbury, and Bruce and Rory.

Walking back from the graduation to the parking garage. Guy found some coffee at the reception so he grabbed some. Nico went for some chamomile tea.

On Wednesday I sent Nico to swimming lessons with... a bath mat. It did not do a very good job of drying him off. It was way too small. Oops. At least he's smiling. Guy sent me this picture and "Towel too small".

Today Nico had a field trip. His whole class rode the city bus downtown. Nico has been researching the US Bank building, and his classmates are all researching downtown buildings too, so they took a walking tour of downtown Boise all day today. They stopped at the Grove plaza to eat lunch. It was a mix of rain and sun, so I sent a hat and an umbrella with him. They were supposed to catch the bus back to school, but they MISSED it! The class walked all the way back to Adams from downtown. Wowza! Lots of exercise today.

I asked him to tell me a story about today:

"We went to the Zion bank and we went to the US Bank." Cool what did you guys do there? "We just looked at it and then we, the only place we went inside was Zions bank because it's really famous because it's the tallest building in Idaho."

I called the landlord of the house across the street, and she said she still hasn't heard anything about their specific move out date. She told me their lease is up at the end of June, and then she will spend the next month painting. I told her we're willing to wait for it, so she asked me a little more about us. I told her where we're living now, and that Nico is going to Adams and we'd like to stay in the district. She mentioned the rent would probably be going up (out of our price range), but she said nothing has been decided yet and to call her in the middle of June. Currently lawn care is included in rent, so I asked if she'd be willing to drop the rent if we took care of the yard and she said the owners have had bad experiences with letting tenants do that in the past. I'm hoping they will make an exception for us, but I'll wait until June to touch base with her again and talk about all that.

Still hoping beyond hope!

Fun Easter Weekend! Swimming Success, Business Travel

We had a great Easter weekend! It started off Saturday with a library trip. Guy and Nico went together while I did some work. There was a robot there they could play with, and they were able to check one out from the library! There's an app you can download to interact with it. Nico played with it nonstop after they got home. Over the next few days it was one of the only things he did when he had free time. We told him it didn't count as iPad time, since he was "programming". There are some video snippets at the end of the blog!

Saturday afternoon we went to my brother Jonny's house for an Easter BBQ. There was yummy food, and an Easter egg hunt for the kids.

Ready...Set...

Go!

Nico made a new friend while we were there, and as we were leaving, his friend said, "I'm going to miss you. We really had a fun time." It was very sweet. Some video from the BBQ at the end of the blog!

Sunday we were at church early. Guy was running sound, Nico had practice with the kids group because they were going to be on stage for one of the songs, and I had practice for a piano/flute duet I was doing with another gal.

On the way to the church Nico said that he didn't want to do the thing on stage anymore, because he was nervous. I told him I was nervous about my thing, too, and that it's ok to be nervous and it shouldn't keep us from doing the thing. After I finished talking, a Parry Gripp song started playing, his songs are so silly, this one says "there's a young girl talking about herself. You can't stop her." And Nico said "Mommy, this song makes me feel better, because it's about a young girl talking about herself, and she's not nervous about talking about herself."

Engage Boise live streams all their services, so I snuck some screen shots off the video to capture these. Nico was in charge of waving the flag during the song.

And we played "Fairest Lord Jesus" during the offering.

Sunday afternoon, Guy was able to take a good long nap. Afterward, we decided to ride bikes. We biked on the greenbelt and we went far. Nico wanted to keep going but we told him we needed to turn around. It's a good thing we did, because the wind was actually helping us on our way out, and against us on the way back. We stopped every few minutes on our way back to check my map to see how much further. Nico's legs were aching and he was having a hard time riding against the wind. Guy rode in front of us on the way back to help block the wind for us. We were gone about an hour and a half.

Swimming on Monday.

Nico eating nachos, reading Peanuts. He is careful to delineate which of the two Peanuts books is his and which is Daddy's. It's important to keep track.

Nico excavating something from an Egyptian pyramid, from his Little Passports monthly subscription.

On Wednesday Nico passed Swimming Level 2!! It's the end of the swimming session and time to sign up for new classes, so Level 3 for him will start next week! I am very proud of him.

Wednesday morning after Nico left for school, I travelled up to Pullman, WA for a business trip. Since there's family in the area it's always a mix of business and family! My mom was already in Pullman when I arrived, along with my Aunt Mary Anne! My Aunt Liz came today, and I was also able to see my cousins and my Uncle Jerry.

It has been SO fun to be surrounded by family even while being here for business! I travelled to Farmington today for work and will drive there tomorrow as well, returning Saturday to Boise.

Now time for the video!

BED BUGS, family, eye doctor, hair cut, gg, woah that's a lot!

Well Hello! It's been a while! I think that was the first time I ever skipped a week. Let's jump right into it!

On March 1st, Friday, Guy woke up sick, with whatever it was that I had while in Redding. I told him to stay home from work and he quickly got worse. He spent all Friday, Saturday, and Sunday in bed, he finally started feeling himself again only a few days ago.

Jumping on the trampoline with Merek on Friday the 1st

Saturday visit to the library. I parked across the street and we took the Greenbelt tunnel to the library. A bit of fresh air.

On our way back to the car with our goodies.

Nico chose our movie on Saturday and he chose one of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid movies. Guy ate a few pieces of pizza and then went to bed while Nico and I stayed up to watch it. Those movies are funny, I enjoyed it.

Nico had told me about a STEM activity they had done in the library on Friday. On Saturday I saw pictures on Facebook that were posted of the event, and downloaded a few of them. Nico won this challenge - how many squares can you fit onto your popsicle stick without them falling over?

Practicing a magic trick

It was Sunday night, while Guy was lying in bed staring at the wall, that he saw a bug crawling up that wall, right next to our bed. He called me over and we identified it as a bed bug. Ah shucks! With a toothpick, Guy went fishing in the crack between the wall and the baseboard, and pulled out a shed bed bug skin. We slept in the bed that night, I was hoping that perhaps those two bug signs would be the extent of it. But, you know that's rarely the case.

Monday afternoon I pulled all the sheets off our beds and scoured the mattresses while sanitizing the sheets in the washing machine. I found NO signs of bed bugs on either mattress. Guy and I were casually talking about how to prevent a bed bug outbreak when he tapped lightly on the wardrobe and I watched as something fell from the spot he tapped, right onto the bare mattress. Boom. Another shed bed bug skin.

That dreadful feeling in the pit of my stomach - uh oh - they're in the wardrobe!!

We indeed found bed bugs hiding between the cracks on the back of the wardrobe.

You can only see one bed bug in this picture, but there were about a dozen scattered in the crack right here.

We decided to go professional, and we called around and found a good place that specializes in bed bugs. The treatment involves spraying a pesticide around the baseboards, then heating up the house to 135 degrees for 6 hours. Afterward, they sprinkle silica around the baseboards.

The guy (Dave) came to take a look before telling us whether he could do it, because we live in a small place he was worried about clutter, which can make the treatment harder to do. He said there wasn't much clutter, just that everything was all together in a small space. He said he could do it!  He said it would either be Thursday the 7th or the following Monday, the 11th, that he could do it.

So that night we moved out of the clubhouse and into a hotel for 3 nights. Dave asked us to remove all the clothes from the wardrobe and from our cube storage dresser and heat-treat them in the dryer and then get them out of the house. So I spent the next few days doing that. We slept at the hotel but then came back to the Clubhouse in the mornings for breakfast and school, then after school went back to the hotel.

When we discovered that it would not be Thursday that the treatment would take place, we booked another 5 days at an AirBnb close to downtown. We decided then to stay away from the Clubhouse. The bed bugs, having nothing to eat, would likely migrate. They can sense when someone comes into the room because they can smell the carbon dioxide and feel the heat of a body. If they are hungry, they can move fast to get a quick meal, even if you are standing on the floor for even a few minutes. To prevent migration, we had the door that leads to the main house sprayed with a pesticide. And so we stayed away. The only things we brought with us were heat-treated clothes, food, and plastic bags to put everything in. We left purses, back packs, bags, EVERYTHING, at the Clubhouse. Hmm... except the iPads and the Nintendo DS. We removed those the first day we went to a hotel, so we felt safe that the bed bugs hadn't migrated to them. And because the bed bugs weren't in the bathroom, we were able to bring our bathroom overnight bag filled with all our shampoo and combs.

At the AirBnb

The week that this all took place, my Aunt Liz was in town. I was able to see her on Thursday, and then on Friday there was a get together at my parents' house with Aunt Liz, and other family.

Saturday morning Nico and I researched which library we could go to to get the rest of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books. There were four more that he needed to read. We realized after leaving that it didn't open until noon, so we drove to the park that was a few blocks away and I let him play while I stayed in the car figuring out what to do (and because brrrr it was cold I didn't want to get out!) I decided to take him somewhere as a surprise. He tried to guess where we were going the whole way there. He finally got it right when I turned into the parking lot, Lakeshore Learning. I told him he HAD to buy something with MY MONEY or he couldn't leave the store. He seemed pleased with that idea.

He chose some magnetic putty, and an archeological dig activity where he had to excavate five stones from a block of dirt.

We waited until after noon and then ran to the specific library we needed to go to, and we came home with four books for Nico to read. 

For dinner that night we chose to go to a place called Asian Cuisine, we ordered to go. Guy chose Dark Crystal for the movie. Nico mostly played with his magnetic putty and came over to see what was going on every once in a while. 

We really took advantage of the opportunity to eat out. Sunday we ordered pizza. Monday we had Boise Fry Company, Tuesday was Jimmy Johns. But I'm getting ahead of myself...

Breakfast on Sunday (no pancakes, so it was toast with peanut butter and jam. No toaster, so it was microwave-heated bread with peanut butter and jam).

Sunday afternoon we visited the park again, and then got Nico's hair cut. 

Monday after school Nico had an eye appointment. He needs glasses, so we chose a pair for him and they should be ready in a few weeks.

Green is Nico's favorite color. These glasses are green on the bottom, and slightly leopard print on the top. They happen to look a lot like Guy's glasses, but not on purpose. It was the green that got him hooked.

Nico is VERY excited about having glasses.

The heat treatment took place this past Monday. We didn't bother coming home Monday evening, because I knew there would be a layer of dust on everything and I would have more time to deal with it the following day.

The next day I spent at the Clubhouse washing sheets and dusting, mopping, etc. No sign of bugs anywhere... yay! We are guaranteed bug free for at least 30 days after treatment. We are thinking that the bites were causing hives on Nico, and that's where his hives were coming from. He's been hive free since we left the Clubhouse.

After school on Tuesday we went to visit GG and Aunt Pat. Melody (Aunt Pat's daughter) stopped by and we got a few handfuls of seeds from her! Peppers, Cucumber, and Radishes. We'd like to plant them out front. We picked up Jimmy John's on the way home, then Guy and Nico went to Cub Scouts that night. There was a magician there that showed them 3 magic tricks and Nico came home with the tricks to show me, they are pretty good!

Wednesday was the parent baseball meeting at Timberline High School. We skipped the spaghetti feed this year, and just showed up for the meeting. It was a quick and informative presentation, and afterward we met Nico's baseball coach. He is on the REDS team. Practices could possibly start next week depending on weather, otherwise they will start closer to April. The coach is very laid back.

On our to do list: Make sure Nico's equipment will still function for another season. He may have grown out of some of his stuff.

Some quick snippets of the past two weeks. We are welcoming the Grandparents Russell into town tomorrow, as Spring Break is upon us! Stay tuned!