Nature Walks, and Semaphores

I was in Pullman until Saturday, so last Friday after school Guy took Nico to the Discovery Center.

Then Guy sent me a video of Nico doing manual Tetris on the light board using stop motion filming! Here it is:

Saturday was my trip home from Pullman. Guy and Nico had a Cub Scouts adventure at Deer Flats in Nampa, ID that morning, and they had a lot of fun. Guy said later that he wished he could go back and Nico piped up and said, "Me too!"

Just one other Cub Scout from his den was there, so it was a small field trip. 

Guy and Nico hung out with Jeff and Allicia and the kiddos that afternoon, and then started making pizza late, which was just in time for me to enjoy it, too! I arrived home at 7pm. It was Nico's choice of movie and he chose Three Stooges.

Nico's Cub Scout den leader is trying to help Nico get all his badges so he can graduate from being a Bear at the next pack meeting. They met at the den leader's house on Tuesday, and they all went for a hike so they could get some badge requirements taken care of. Guy and Nico came home Tuesday night and told me the good news - Nico will graduate from being a Bear! He will then be a Webelos. (I think that stands for We'll be loyal scouts).

He is now in Level 3 of swimming lessons and he LOVES it! 

He checked out a book about flags from the school library, and there's a section in the back about semaphores. So he practiced semaphores for a few days.

Nico put his glasses on Yoshi, and told me to take a picture and send to Daddy and say, "Nico has turned into Yoshi."

Nico is a published poet!

Tonight after dinner Nico and I went for a walk while Guy was at band practice. I let him choose where we went.

The trail ended in a neighborhood so we walked back to our house through the neighborhood. He talked about wanting to be an explorer and a traveller. Then we talked about where he would want to live and he was trying to find a way for us to move somewhere that would allow him to continue going to Adams Elementary, but also allow him to ride the bus to school and be closer to Grandma Russell. 

I contacted the landlord of the house on our street that we're wanting to move into this summer. She told me that nothing is set in stone yet with them moving out, and when they do move out she will take a month to paint and clean the place up. Since I do know that they are moving out, it would likely be July that the house would be available. I will call her in a few weeks to check in. Nico continues to say that he wants to move into a small house because he doesn't like big houses. 

Here are some snippets from this past week!

BIrthday Party, Chess Tournament, Nachos!

Saturday was a fun and full day. We celebrated Grandma Salisbury's birthday at Smokey Mountain Pizza. Our private gathering room has its own door to the parking lot, so I took a video of the kids after they ran out to greet Grandma and Papa when they arrived. Watch the video and beware when Nico starts running back toward me, WHACK! Yeouch!! The video is at the bottom of the blog post!

Happy Birthday (today!) To Grandma Salisbury!

Straight from the party, Guy drove Nico over to JUMP (Jack's Urban Meeting Place) for a Chess tournament/party. They went a little early because JUMP has a slide from the 5th floor of the parking garage that goes all the way down to the ground and Nico wanted to try it. But it was closed! Instead, they climbed on the jungle gym until the party started.

This afternoon I received this email from his chess coach:

We already signed him up for next year chess.

Saturday night we rented Mary Poppins Returns from RedBox, it was my choice. We all loved it. After the movie was over, Nico asked, "I want to watch ALL the Mary Poppins movies, are there any more?" Nope, shucks!

There was one evening this week (I think Sunday night) when Nico was very sad. We had said no to something he wanted. So here is Guy snuggling him on the couch. Guy sang to him the song he used to sing to him several years ago when we lived on Krall st. "The sun is sinking in the west...." Nico remembered the song and started crying. It was a very sweet moment. I'm surprised Nico remembered the song! When Guy put him into bed, he whimpered in his bed and started crying again and said "Daddy I want to spend more time with you." So Guy got up into Nico's bed and they hung out for a while.

On Mondays and Wednesdays, swimming nights, if we get to the Y a little early, Nico is able to play in the kiddie pool. Here's a shot of those shenanigans.

I love the Y swimming lessons. There are 4 life guards on duty. And, the air is very warm, not just the water, which means Nico doesn't get cold and shivery! He's able to make it through the entire 30 minute lesson. I am hooked and will probably never go back to lessons at the Natatorium. 

Tuesday night at Cub Scouts, the Birds of Prey were there!

Cub Scouts snack.

Nico has been on a nacho kick lately. He made these by himself.

Nico's friends across the street are moving in June, and I chatted with their mom about it and asked if she'd be willing to share their landlord's phone number with us so we could potentially move in after they move out. If across the street doesn't work out, we plan to move somewhere else THIS SUMMER! The time has come! We would love to stay in this area so we are hoping for the house across the street. We are super excited and being very dreamy about it. We are working hard to make it work!

This week was Nico's first standardized testing day for 3rd grade. It was a math test today. 1-2 hour tests, about 7 tests total in the next few weeks. We ordered him a vibrating wrist band that vibrates every 5 minutes to help keep him on task. I am looking forward to hearing from his teacher how it works for him at school. It will arrive on Saturday!

Enjoy the video!

Bed Bugs Revisited!

Nico came home from Grandma Camp (not technically a Grandma Camp but we're calling it that) last Thursday night with a diary he could fill out a la Diary of a Wimpy Kid. He was working on it Friday and created his Dream House. I love that it has an art gallery in it.

Friday was a total relax day. It wasn't the best weather outside so we stayed indoors and watched Three Stooges.

Saturday was a slow day as well, I had some cleaning and organizing planned, but I hurt my back Friday night so we made Saturday a slow day as well. Nico went over to Rylan's house for a while in the afternoon.

It was my turn to pick the movie for pizza night and so we rented Ralph Breaks the Internet from RedBox at M&W Market. It was funny, we all liked it!

Sunday started like any other day, but after church I noticed Nico was itching. Nico had bed bug bites! Uh oh! Guy went on a search and found a live bed bug in Nico's bed frame. So he killed it. Then he got meticulous, and pulled out the rails on Nico's bed, searched the wardrobe, and our bed. He found no other live bed bugs. But what we did find was a previous infestation in the frame of Nico's bed. Lots of bed bug casings and in the cardboard room separator Guy found EGGS. They are visible to the naked eye, as are bed bugs. Can you see them in this picture?

These are likely dead eggs that were killed in the first heat treatment. We called the bed bug guys on Monday and they were able to come out on Tuesday for another heat treatment. We spent Monday afternoon getting everything ready for the treatment, and Tuesday he showed up bright and early before 8AM to get started. In addition to the heat treatment, he also sprayed a "safe"? pesticide on Nico's bed frame.

We stayed the night at my parents' house on Tuesday night. We played a game I don't remember the name of, and Grandma made these things called "Ogre Bars" that we ate while we played.  The game was fun, and the ogre bars were delicious! We arrived home Wednesday morning for an early school day with chess. I spent Wednesday cleaning up the Clubhouse after the heat treatment.

For the next few nights Nico is sleeping in our bed, to let his pesticide bed air out. Not that our bed is much further from his bed than his own mattress, but the less exposure he has to it the better I'd feel!

Some unexpected melted things upon our arrival home Wednesday:

Nico made a big decision this week. Baseball season is starting up, and every Tuesday he has baseball practice or a baseball game. Tuesdays are also Cub Scout nights. We asked Nico to choose between Cub Scouts and baseball, and he chose Cub Scouts. So, we are dropping baseball for now. We recently signed him up for swimming lessons at the Y, they start next Monday. Twice a week on Mondays and Wednesdays until he knows how to swim!

Yesterday Nico came home from school and asked Alexa to play Potato Dog. Funny song! I asked Alexa who sang it and she said Perry Gripp, so I asked her to play songs by Perry Gripp and all of a sudden Alexa was playing all these songs that Nico knew! He was stoked!! He had his very own dance party. You can check it out in the video :D :D :D Nico knows these songs from his Chess class, Coach Vellotti plays them. They are really hilarious. Some of them even have videos on Youtube.

Playing the Game of Life!

When I picked up Nico from Drama today, we passed by his classroom and we talked to his teacher a bit about the project he was going to do that requires a tri-fold poster board. It's a voluntary project that requires research and presentation. For the previous 2 years Nico has done it. The first year it was about a particular bird (can't remember which!), last year he only started it but didn't finish, it was about different boat sizes (based on a YouTube video he had seen). This year he has chosen to do his report on India. He spent some time researching tonight on the computer. I had to find a safe internet search site for kids, and came across kidtopia.info, run by Google. He found some good stuff from National Geographic Kids about India that he copied down. 

After dinner tonight we all went to band practice at the church. Nico and I only stayed a little while. Myself and another girl will be doing a piano/flute duet for Easter, so I was giving her the sheet music. Guy is bringing home a keyboard for me to practice on for the next month. 

I had an interesting discussion with Nico tonight on our way to church about God, after the radio mentioned the sometimes-used tactic to disprove God by asking, “If God can do anything, can he create a rock so big that he can’t pick it up?” 

I think God already did that by creating the law. A rock that he can’t “pick up” (dispose of), and by creating his promises, which he can’t break. Sin requires death, and that can’t be changed, so he created a way around it by sending Jesus to die.

Nico asked so many questions, and he reframed back to me what I was saying. I've never seen him repeat back to me what I was saying in different words just to make sure he got it right. We talked about sin requiring death, that's why the Israelites sacrificed animals. But then Jesus came and died once for all. So Nico said, "So sin is like all balled up into one place, and Jesus takes it away. Then we sin again, and he takes it away, then we sin and he takes it away. Like we're fresh."

Right on, little dude!

That's it for this week, enjoy the video!

New York Pizza, Dentist, Dr Seuss

With Nico's new delivery of Little Passports, U.S. edition, he found a recipe for New York Pizza. So on Saturday we tried it out. It was mostly a change in crust, since Nico still preferred his normal toppings, but Guy jumped on board with the straight up basil and cheese pizza. The crust was good, Nico says he wants me to make it from now on. It was more crunchy. I liked it, too.

Saturday afternoon Nico started not feeling very good. He had a headache and a tummy ache that ended up with him getting sick. He felt fine and dandy afterward and ate some pizza, and back to normal life after. Just one of those things!

This week at school is Dr Seuss week! Monday was Green Eggs and Ham day, so he was supposed to try eating something new. I sent Lima Beans to school with him :) He ate two bites! Tuesday was wear blue day, or a shirt with your favorite animal on it. Wednesday was class picture day so it was "Well dressed Wednesday". Today was crazy mismatched sock day.

Tuesday after school Nico had a dentist appointment. Nico asked the dentist when he could get his front tooth fixed because it was chipped. The dentist told him it would be better to wait until he's older, because front teeth have ridges on the bottom that wear down over time. The dentist then casually mentioned that maybe they would fix it around the time Nico gets his orthodontic work done. That was the first I had heard of it, so I made sure to ask him about it. He said that Nico has an overbite that will need to be fixed. They typically like to see a 10% overbite but Nico's is 100%. Oh! Ok. Just the night before Nico had asked me, "What is head gear?" and I had told him all about orthodontics. He'll be 12-ish when we start to pursue that.

Tuesday morning I also received a call from the nurse telling me that she had forgotten to pass on Nico's vision test results. They tested his vision as part of the gamut of testing they did. His vision is "borderline referral", so she suggested it might be a good idea to get his eyes checked. Nico in glasses eh???

Today Guy went to Nico's school to read Nico's class a Dr Seuss book during their library time. He chose Oh Say Can You Say (a family favorite!) He had fun doing it. He read the book using different accents. I got to hear a preview when Guy read the book to Nico last night. And then Nico took the book to bed with him and read the entire book out loud about 5 times. Tongue twisters are fun.

Last night Nico told me that today they were celebrating July birthdays and that we could bring treats to share if we wanted. So today I made a double batch of snickerdoodles and sent them with Guy when he went to the school. The party started right after the library time, and Nico got to share cookies with the class. Guy joined his class for the party. He told me that one of Nico's classmates asked, "What kind of cookies are these?" Guy told him they were snickerdoodles and he said, "I've never heard of snickerdoodles, is that the same as schnitzel?"

Guy told me that the librarian took a video of a portion of his reading. I have been following the school Facebook page and they have been posting pictures/videos of the guest readers this week, so if they post it on Facebook I will get it somehow so that I can share it with the blog next week!

Pretending to be an ostrich, wearing Guy's shirt.

 Rough housing. Guy shoved Nico between the wall and the bed, then called me over to see. hehe.

Drama class is going well. He is successfully memorizing his lines. We've been practicing every morning. I'm so proud of him!

His reading adventures this past week include Diary of a Wimpy Kid books. He checked out the next one today at the school library. He always reads a book while he eats breakfast.

That's it for this week!

Wahooz, Poems, Snow Travel, and Word Crimes

I was out of town until just yesterday. My plan was to return Monday but I got sick while away and couldn't drive home until Wednesday.

I asked Guy to tell me about last weekend. I transcribed his exact words below. For reference, on Saturday morning Guy took Evelyn with him to pick up Nico from the Grandparents' Salisbury house, where Nico had stayed overnight. He then took both Evelyn and Nico to Wahooz to use the tickets they won by finishing the workout challenge last year. Also, "Odd Saturday", which Guy mentions, is a tradition that Jeff and Allicia and family do on the 1st and 3rd Saturdays of every month. They invite friends over to play games and they eat dinner. We do not typically participate because Saturday is our pizza night.

It was snowing and pretty deep when we got there, I almost slid off the road, (but not in a scary way. In a very safe way). At Wahooz, the main attraction was the laser maze, which they went through several times to go avoid lasers. Then played some arcade games. Nico and I played Connect 4. And I won. And um then we tried bowling for a little bit but that didn't last very long. Evelyn wasn't interested. Then what they really wanted to do was play on the Ballocity which was like a giant play area with balls, but not like a ball pit but like a giant multi-story building that has tubes where you can shoot balls and they go in tubes and go all over the place. They disappeared in there for a while, running all over the place. Actually they were there the longest. Then it was time for us to grab our coats and go home, but Nico wanted to play on the spin-a-whirly game, like tilt-a-whirl. I thought he was going to get motion sick but he was all golden. Then when we got home, it was Odd Saturday, I played [games] and Nico watched a movie downstairs which turned into mostly rough-housing with Avery but for the most part they were having fun, and the adults were having fun. Sunday I don't remember what we did. Hey Nico what did we do on Sunday? Nico: Family Meeting. Guy: We did do a family meeting where we filled up my pills for the week. That was Nico's idea. The rest of the days were just kind of doing chores. We wrote poems. 

Here is Guy's poem:

He's a poet!

And here is Nico's (amazing!) poem: 

He took it to school with him to let his teacher read it, and she wrote that sweet note on the bottom. He then told me he has started writing Mrs. Kobe a poem that he's going to let her read when he's done. Here is the start of it:

We've got poets in the house!

Here are some pictures from Guy and Nico's time together: 

 Guy sent me this picture of Nico's perfectly square cheese, Nico insisted he wanted me to see it.

Nico spent the whole time I was away sleeping in our bed with Guy. Guy said Nico is a tornado.

On Sunday they went to see The Lego Movie 2 in the theaters after church. They were giving out these Lego sets! I'm sure they got popcorn and water too. On Sunday they also saw a Downy Woodpecker on the tree out front.

Tuesday, Nico and I were supposed to visit GG, but since I was still in Redding, Guy said he could take Nico. Allicia is out of town at the moment, too, so I was going to be watching the kids this week after school. But on Tuesday I was just going to be watching Evelyn, by taking her with us to GG's house. So, Guy and Nico and Evelyn all went together! They played Jumanji and Evelyn and Guy tied. Afterward, they hit up Jimmy John's.

Wednesday was my travel day home. I woke up in Redding with several inches of snow on the ground and no power at the hotel. I packed up all my belongings with a head lamp on, and dug my car out.

I put chains on my car before leaving the parking lot. I was so grateful for my "mountain training" when I lived with my parents before Guy and I were married. It helped me more than once on this trip - 1st in getting my chains on, and 2nd in not freaking out driving on snow-covered roads with my chains on. I had a lot of people praying me home. 

As I was climbing the mountain of that first pass, I came to a bridge where there were 3 semi trucks stuck in the snow, with just enough space between them for cars to weave through. A police trooper stopped me before I passed the 3rd one, I rolled down my window and he told me if possible that I should turn around and not go any further, that the roads would only get worse from there "They have two feet of snow in Burney!" I imagined plowing through 2 feet of snow with my car. I told him I was still going to go. He told me to make sure I had extra water, a flashlight, and extra blankets, I told him I did. I saw him glance at my front tire for chains and then he waved me on.

About an hour into the trip, after I was over that pass, the chain on my left front tire broke. I had to take both chains off at that point. Thankfully, I was only 7 miles from the nearest town (Burney), and there was no longer snow on the road but just wet cement and a bit of slush. My mom directed me to the nearest Les Schwab, where I got studless snow tires for my car and another set of chains. The 2 feet of snow in Burney was true, but it wasn't on the road. They had piled it all in the middle, it was an easy town to maneuver through and they were well prepared for visitors. The ground was wet, there was no ice anywhere. I didn't have to use chains again! I went over several more passes but there was just sporadic slush. The snow plows kept the road pretty clear. It was a miracle in my opinion, after seeing the reports that the roads would be terrible. The wet roads were steaming themselves dry in front of me.

I arrived in Boise at 9:15 PM, and pulled up to the house to see both my boys outside in the pouring rain, waiting for me to arrive. They gave me a big hug and then helped me unload my car.

It's good to be home!

Here's a picture from today watching the kids after school. Guy came home early to help me out, since I'm still not 100% recovered.

Nico reading DogMan to Avery and Ivy.

All the kids had Valentine's parties today at school, Ivy came home wearing all pink and eating a pink heart sucker.

Nico's Valentine from his teacher was in his planner:

I got an email late last night from Nico's drama club teacher, they have assigned roles in the play they're doing! Nico was assigned the role of King Lobster. He is in Act 2, Scene 2, and then he plays  a different character (one of the sharks) in a later scene. Here's a shot of some of his lines:

There are two full pages like this one, plus another half a page, with his lines scattered like seen here. That's a good amount! Then he's got 3 lines as a shark. The total play is 18 pages long. I think there are 15 kids in his class. His performance is on April 11th, all are invited to come!! If you need specifics let me know!

Tonight Nico is contemplating writing a comic about "Word Crimes", based on a Weird Al video that Guy showed him called Word Crimes. Nico and I watched it tonight and we paused the video every so often so that I could explain what each word crime was (for example, using an apostrophe incorrectly). Then we read Captain Underpants so that I could point out every single word crime. We found about 15 word crimes in the first 2 pages. Captain Underpants is the best book for misspelled words and grammar problems. 

He has asked me to write him a story that has lots of word crimes in it, so I'm going to go do that now. Until next week!