DEBT!

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.

Financial Peace University, Bigfoot

Monday was our very first meeting for Financial Peace University (FPU). We went around the room telling the others why we were there. There were several other couples there and a few people from our church. The class was at our church. When it came to us, Guy told everyone who we were and that we had gone through FPU 8 years ago and have been on Baby Step #2 since that time (Baby Step #2 is to pay off all your debt). And that we were very close to paying off debt and it's been so long we're not sure what to do after we're done.

That was a good way to put it! We weren't sure what Baby Step #3 entails and we could also use a good group of motivated like-minded people to keep us moving in the right direction. We are literally six days away from paying off our debt. And to the week it has been 2 years since we moved in here!

Baby Step #3 is to save up for a "fully funded" emergency fund. In Baby Step #1 we just saved up for $1000 emergency fund, to get us through until our debt was paid off. So a fully funded emergency fund will hold 3-6 months of our expenses, so that if something were to happen to our income we would be able to exist for 3-6 months before needing new income. We plan to do this but we have other things on our plate first, one of which is to find a new place to live (we're about 6 months out from this). This new place will hold us for a while as we get through Baby Step #3, because this baby step has another part to it, #3b, which is to save up for a down payment on a house.

We understand that things can change, but this is our vision of the future for now!

And so, wait, you came here to hear about Nico? Oh right. He came with us to the meeting on Monday.

:)

and he was so well behaved. We plugged him into the iPad and he played games the whole 2 hours.

On Sunday we got to see the Grandparents Salisbury, plus Lexie! The Grandparents Salisbury recently returned from a trip to St Louis. They brought us back a license plate from Russell, KS that says "RUSSELL" on it! Nico and Lexie both got a Bigfoot toy that pops foam balls out of its mouth. Apparently Lexie and Nico are both very big Bigfoot fans. At Grandma Camp they would watch Finding Bigfoot together. I had no idea Nico was so interested in it! He said to Grandma "want to see what I got from the library?" and he pulled out a graphic novel about the history of Bigfoot! I had no idea he had checked that out. Lexie was so excited about it and looked through it.

Grandma asked Nico if he liked Grandma Camp and he said "Yes, no, kind of" and put his thumb in the middle instead of up or down. Grandma asked him why and he said he didn't like sleeping alone because he got scared (he was usually the first one in bed, and his bed was made up in Grandma's room). Grandma asked him what could make it better next year and he said "Maybe I could sleep in your bed and then when you go to bed you can snuggle me or something?" That was pretty sweet. But then we came up with a different plan - that he sleeps where the big kids sleep. He was happy with that. Grandma asked Lexie what she didn't like about Grandma Camp and Lexie laughed and said she didn't like getting sprayed with water from the kitchen sprayer. Apparently there were a lot of water fights with that thing! And apparently she got Grandma really good in the back one time when Grandma wasn't looking! Nico told us that story.

More bike rides with the boys.

Sorry for the lack of pictures!

We've been doing lots of dot-to-dots, color by numbers, and then this morning he pulled out the mazes. Picture day was on Wednesday. He's been wearing his suspenders to school a lot. He has been asking to go to school early, so, we do! He can't show up before 8:15 but we arrive at about 8:25, the bell rings at 8:40. I suspect he gets there early so he can have first pick of the basketballs. There are a few that are flat.

Nico's Journal, Bike Ride, and Tornadoes

So last week I told you that at the Parent Orientation I wrote a note to Nico in his journal, well on Friday afternoon I received an email from his teacher and she had taken a picture of the note Nico wrote back to me in his journal. I assumed that she had done this for all the kids and parents, but when I talked to her this past week she told me it was just him because what he wrote was so adorable and he did such a good job writing :) Then he wrote a journal entry for Guy, too...

Guy took Friday off from work and we watched Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell on Netflix, the first of the mini series. We have both read the book and so this was very fun. We went downstairs in the basement to watch it.

This past weekend, Allicia's sister got married, so there were lots of family in town and they actually stayed at a house rental in Eagle for the weekend. It was strangely quiet around here. I didn't have any henna booths so we were able to really enjoy spending time together. Nico and I went to the Sensory friendly movie on Saturday, they played Ice Age: Collision Course. It was funny. Tiffanie and boys also went.

Tiffanie took the boys plus Nico for a bike ride on Monday, everyone had the day off! They went by the golf course.

Nico is always excited to go to school in the mornings. This past week he has had to wear certain colors to school so he searched for the right shirt every morning. He's been struggling to eat all of his lunch so this morning he told me to just pack him half a sandwich. It doesn't seem like enough food, just half a sandwich and some veggies, but he did eat it all.

He likes to chatter while we walk to school and tell me things and ask me questions. I love it.

No Spendtember is going swimmingly. Would you believe it if I told you we only have $850 left of our debt?!??!?!??!? I can't believe it! The blog update in 2 weeks might have some super good news about debt payoff... Nico is excited about the huge Star Wars lego we are going to buy when we pay off debt.

Not much else happened this past week!

Oh but I have a funny story. A few nights ago Nico crawled into bed with us and seemed a little restless. Then I heard "Mommy?" and I said "What?" and then he asked me if there were any tomatoes in Idaho. Tomatoes? Yes, there are tomatoes.

N: There are tomatoes in Idaho?

M: Yes

N: A boy at school told me there were no tomatoes in Idaho

M: Oh, well, Jeff and Allicia grow tomatoes in their garden and we've eaten them!

N: But there are no tornadoes?

M: OH, tornadoes? Yes there are tornadoes in Idaho but they are small and don't last long

N: I don't want to live where there are tornadoes

M: Oh but you know what? If there is ever a tornado in Idaho we are in luck because Mommy knows exactly what to do when a tornado happens and we will be fine.

N: I don't want to live in Idaho

I assured him that tornadoes in Idaho are rare and small. They get confused around mountains. Then he fell back to sleep. A few weeks before this, we had been watching tornado videos on YouTube because Nico didn't know what a tornado was, and then I told him I had to turn it off because it was making me nervous because I didn't like tornadoes. Whoops. I'll have to work on that.

Grandma Sleepover, Mega Sports Camp

Last Friday was a very special day because Grandma Salisbury came to visit and she stayed the night in the suite upstairs! I had a henna booth to attend to that night and I was going to be home late, so Grandma took Nico up to the suite and played. Then he went to bed in one of the beds up there. He also got to play with Evelyn and some with Avery, too! Evelyn came upstairs and Nico and her put legos together for a while. I got home just before midnight and carried Nico downstairs to his own bed. Soon after I brought him downstairs, he woke up, crying and asking where Grandma was. I told him that she was sleeping but that he could snuggle with me on the couch (where I was sleeping). So, that's what we did.

The next morning, huzzah! We made apple muffins and brought one up to Grandma. We set the timer to go off when the mall opened, then we headed over there to do some shopping. Grandma took Nico to the toy store and came back with a spiderman toy.

It was a lot of fun, thank you Grandma!!!

"It's Mega Sports Camp Time!" This is what Nico says every morning when it's time to leave for VBS. Him and Evelyn have been having a great ol' time. They sing and dance and run around. I am volunteering there this week, I am the "Snack Coach" (everyone is a coach of something).. I bring the cookies and set up the snack table and hand out cookies, then clean everything up. I volunteered for this job because it would give me an opportunity to give the same snack to everyone because I could bring gluten free cookies! As the week progressed, people brought other snacks to share so now it is a mixture of gluten free and glutenous, but it is still pretty cool to say YES to Nico for most things.

I also chose Snack Coach because it doesn't require handling kids. Hey, if I can choose, I might as well not do something that will wear me out even more.... riiiight? ;)

They give out lots of candy. I told Allicia how much candy Evelyn ate the first day and she was worried how the afternoon would turn out. Well the next morning we saw. Evelyn had cut chunks of her bangs off the previous afternoon as part of her art. She was taping her hair to the pictures she was drawing. Very innovative! From then on out Evelyn was instructed to bring home all of her candy.

For Nico, I cut up some Nico-safe candies into smaller pieces and re-wrapped them in parchment paper. It totally worked.

I will have a video of VBS probably next week. This week has been so busy I have had barely any extra time. I actually caught on tape when Nico was called on to answer a question during one of the "rallies" they had in the main sanctuary. He loves talking into a microphone. He always raises his hand though he has never known the answer to the question they asked. And here are some of his responses to the questions:

"I'm going to tell you a story first. I had an ant, and a leaf, and the next morning, the ant had died!"

"Uhmm....Jesus died on the cross" (this is the one I caught on video)

"I went to the cabin, and there was an elk, and we saw the elk, and then the elk ran away!"

"The storm rains down on the ground" (this was on topic! The question was about storms in our life)

Everyone is so encouraging of him and they clap or say "Right On!"

Then with the dancing, oh the dancing!! He is enjoying that part of VBS so much.

The dance class with Evelyn, I thought started this week but is actually next week, next Monday. There is actually another dance class I came across, Hip Hop, for Nico's age, that is also on Mondays, right before the one with Evelyn. I am seriously considering signing him up for that one too, since I'm pretty sure that's his favorite kind of music to dance to. But, it would be a long afternoon, with 1 1/2 hours of dancing. Maybe I'll hold off on that for now.

I heard back from Nico's doc. The blood tests came back ALL clear... nothing was amiss. His food allergy tests were all negative. I think we'll sit on this info for a while before we pursue anything else.  Haven't heard from the ultrasound place yet to set up his ultrasound.

Not sure much else has happened this week.

OH WAIT!!! Something very important happened this week!! Look at the picture and guess:

We paid off our first debt!!! A total of $11,000 since last September! I can't believe it happened so quickly! We are celebrating by going to Red Robin on Sunday. We already made a new thermometer for our next debt. We're on our way :)

Ok now that HAS to be it... I'm pretty sure there's nothing else.