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.
We had a nicely full day on Saturday. Nico and I went to Grandma and Papa's house so that Grandma could explain the Printer Mystery to Nico. Nico had told us about the printer randomly printing pages during Grandma Camp, so Nico texted Grandma on Friday to ask her if she had figured it out yet, he seemed a bit worried about it, so she decided to spill the beans! When we visited them on Satuday, Grandma told him to check the printer. He checked it and found a paper that had been printed on! They read it and then she sent him back to the printer to see if there was anything else. YES there was another paper! (Which Papa had secretly snuck in there). Grandma and Papa worked together like this until about 10 papers had been revealed, each one telling a piece of the Printer Mystery story. View the video at the end of this entry to read through the papers and discover the mystery!
From there, we drove to Timberline High School, where our church was putting on a Glow-in-the-Dark Easter Egg Hunt. Guy was working the sound, and I was set to work at the Face Painting table. We helped set up and then people slowly started to arrive. I realized after a time that between me and Guy, there was no one to watch Nico. It wasn't a big deal when it was just our church there setting up, he could run around the huge field and everyone knew him. But as thousands of people started arriving, I realized I may need to figure this out. The line for face painting was long and I had no visual of the field. Nico would run over every once in a while for water, which made me happy. I told him to keep checking in and then prayed that God would take care of him. The next time he checked in, he had Lexie with him! The next time after that he told me he was going to be with Jonny and Alanna and Lexie. I looked up and Jonny was waving at me. HUGE SIGH OF RELIEF. The crowd was really packed now. I didn't know they were going to be there, but I am so grateful they were!
The face painting line went to ZERO as soon as Pastor Tim got on the mic and started preparing everyone for the countdown. We started cleaning up and I was able to catch a video of the countdown and field rush. (check out video at end of entry)
Thank you to Alanna for taking these pictures!! They estimated 4,000-6,500 people showed up!
Sunday was a relaxing day. We decided to have pizza that night since we weren't able to on Saturday. It was Nico's turn to choose the show, and he chose Garfield.
Monday came along and it was back to school for Nico!
Tuesday was an interesting day! In the morning Nico lifted his shirt up and asked me why there was a painful lump on his stomach right above his belly button. It was about the size of peanut and painful to the touch. I calmly said we would go to a doctor that day to figure it out. I called the office at the stroke of 8, and got Nico in at 9:30. The doc said it wasn't a hernia, but was definitely a lump, she could move it around with her finger (ouch!). The next step would be an ultrasound to determine whether it was "vascular" or just an easily removable cyst. I didn't know what vascular meant, when I asked her she said that if it was vascular it meant that the lump had blood vessels involved with it and it would be harder to remove and could possibly continue growing. The outcome we should hope for would be the cyst. They could them remove it right in their office instead of doing surgery at the hospital. She told me the imaging center would call soon to schedule the ultrasound.
I dropped Nico off at school and then called up my prayer team. My mom and Guy's mom, then texted Aunt Mary and Ellen Gray. I did this from the school parking lot. When I was done, I started driving home. As I was turning onto our street my phone rang. I thought it was the ultrasound place to schedule the appointment but instead it was the doctor's office. She said she consulted with Dr Eck (the main doctor at the office) and he said it sounded like a "liquefied hematoma", which is much less scary and much more common (especially in active children). I don't know much about it, but I understand it to be like an internal bruise where blood is collected in a spot and can produce a lump. The fact that it was very painful was a good sign. She told me to watch it over the next few days and if it became less painful and the slight bruising started turning yellow, that means it's healing and it's not a cyst or other kind of lump. PHEW.
I gave all my prayer team the update. Apparently they're goooood at what they do! I didn't even have time to worry about it before it was resolved. I went back to Nico's school to tell him the news. The doctor had told him all about ultrasounds and said "It might hurt because they'll have to press the spot, BUT, there won't be any needles!" So I'm sure he was relieved at the news.
On Wednesday morning he woke up and I asked him how it felt. Still painful but not as bad... and look it's starting to turn yellow!
I learned that my cousin Rick (Aunt Mary's son) and my Uncle Jerry both had similar lumps like this when they were younger, and they both went away! Not sure if they were the same thing, but it was still reassuring to hear stories of disappearing lumps :)
Wednesday was Nico's first baseball practice. The doc had given us the OK to continue normal physical activity, since it wasn't a hernia. Nico got to wear his new cleats and made sure that I brought the towel that Dick's Sporting Goods gave him, "in case I sweat!" Hehe.
We found the practice field, and once practice started his team huddled up. The coach talked about the 3 things to remember about baseball:
1 - Have Fun
2 - Work Hard
3 - ?
Hmmm.... Oh well.
The coach showed them how to hold the ball, and they practiced the "creeper stance", while you're in the outfield waiting for the batter to hit the ball.
Video down below with more baseball stuff!
Tonight we had Evelyn over for dinner even though her family was home. Avery felt a little bad about it, I'll have to figure out a way to make it up to him. We had mandarin chicken and fried rice. I don't think I could ever make those two dishes again at the same time. If Guy wouldn't have been home early tonight I would have ruined both dishes!! It requires two people and a few more burners, and a few more dishes.
BUT, it was REALLY tasty and everyone loved it. In the future I could probably make the rice ahead of time so I won't be doing both dishes at once.
Afterwards they did some rough housing. One of their favorite things to do.
Friday was Ivy's birthday party! She turned 1 year old. Allicia kind of combined it with Easter, so each child at the party had a different color of egg to find, each had 8 eggs. After Nico opened his eggs, he went up to Camden (one of Ivy's cousins)...
"Can I help you open your eggs?"
She was happy to let him help. There was also egg coloring at the party. And a cute one year old that smooshed a bunch of cake into her face.
We colored eggs ourselves on Saturday. Allicia had given us an egg coloring kit and so we used it. It came with props to decorate the eggs as animals. So, we did!
I decorated one with a henna flower and then Nico followed suit and decorated one of his that way too. I think he did a pretty good job!!
Here was mine
Then Sunday was Eeeeeeeaster! We invited Nico's neighbor friends and their mom to go to church with us for the egg hunt there and the breakfast they serve before the service. Nico was totally psyched that they got to go with him. All of them had a lot of fun and they all came home with prizes. Because Nico can't have corn syrup, they made special eggs for him and put an N on them for him to find.
After church we headed straight up to the cabin!! Yay!! I helped Mom get everything ready for the Easter meal at 4 PM, we had a wide selection of sandwich fixins plus a microgreen salad. Yummy food. And then the Easter Egg Hunt! I forgot to snap many pictures, but did get one.
Thanks so much Ma & Pa for the great time, all the goodies for the kids, and the yummy food! Happy Easter!!
On Monday I had a dental cleaning and then Nico just had a follow up with x-rays from the cavities he had before. His cavities are the same and have not gotten ANY worse! Woohoo! The dentist said we could just leave it (as long as I understand the increased risk of needing to get something done quickly to his mouth if they do start to go downhill), and we don't have to do x-rays every 3 months, he will just check cosmetically at Nico's 6 month appointments and will be able to see if any of them are degrading. He said it would be different if these weren't baby teeth, and I understood that. What we had started doing to arrest the cavity development is consistent flossing plus using an essential oil tooth blend that I put on his toothbrush instead of toothpaste.
RIGHT next to the dentist is a LEGO store buy/sell/trade (called Bricks and MiniFigs), that just opened last week. So, after we were finished at the dentist we walked over there and looked around. They have a room to have birthday parties and so I got information about that. I figured after we were done, we had time, so we drove to the OTHER lego place (called Bricknowlogy) located in Eagle to look around there, so Nico could make a good decision about which one he wanted to have his party at. He decided he wanted his party at Bricknowlogy because each of his friends would get their own lego set to put together at the party. I reminded him that if he chose that option, that he would only get to invite 5 friends, as opposed to 12 for the other place. He was okay with that. So we plan to have 2 birthday parties for him (Phew!), one for his friends at Bricknowlogy and one for family the next day.
That afternoon after school we met Allicia and Evelyn and crew at the Discovery Center. They had a BUBBLE maker!
We left from there to pick Daddy up from work. It was a full day!
Tuesday was a nothing day. Who even remembers what we did? Not me!
Today Nico's friends next door came over for about an hour. They colored and played with cars.
Friday we started our trip to Arlington! Well, Yakima. We decided to split the trip up into two days. We didn't give Nico his headphones with music right away, decided to wait until Baker City (2 hour drive) where we stopped to have lunch. We were barely passing Nampa when Nico said his first "Are we there yet?" It was hilarious. I know he doesn't really have any context for how long the trip takes, he was a few years younger the last time we made the trip. He asked a lot of questions on the trip, mainly, stuff like "What time is it?" and "Are we in Yakima yet?" Guy kept track of how many times Nico asked "Are we there yet?" (14 times) and how many times he asked a question that wasn't exactly that, but was in the spirit of it, like "When are going to be in Yakima?" (26 times)
When we gave him his headphones with music, he was very very excited, and bip bopped along with the music he was listening to.
When we got to Yakima, we checked in, and then drove to Miner Burger. Guy always breaks his gluten rule for Miner Burger.
Then we went to Jimmy John’s to pick up some grub for Nico. 30 minutes after eating, we went to the pool! Watching Nico walk down the stairs with flippers on was funny. The two people behind the front desk got a real kick out of his getup.
He started shivering and turning blue after about 30 minutes. We stayed for a little bit longer and then trucked it upstairs so he could take a warm shower.
Saturday morning it was time to drive to Arlington!
We arrived around 10 AM. Lots of hugs all around! When Nico "met" Uncle Tom again, he said to him "You used to hold me up when I was baby". He was referring to a picture we have on our fridge where Tom is holding up Nico.
We hung out for a few hours until it was time to eat Pizza! A puzzle, cars, and some toys from when Guy was little.
Mom showed me her Microgreens!
Then we went to the beach cottage on Camano Island. Wow!! It was quite a retreat. It was so peaceful. Don't worry, there is a video below showing you guys the walkthrough. It was beautifully decorated and had everything we needed. It had two rooms, one for the bed and one for the tv. After Nico went to bed every night, Guy and I would watch a movie. And the beach you could see out the front door. It was a short walk away....
We taught Nico how to throw rocks over his head into the ocean or at things on the beach. He practiced a lot, it was sometimes scary to be near him while he did it. Sometimes the rocks went straight up into the sky.
DUCK, GUY!
Then they started a band. It was pretty good. Mom did the shuffle on the gravel for some added sound.
(Mom provided some of these pictures. Thank you!!!)
That night we went to the Chatterbox for dinner, which is a restaurant in Stanwood that serves Thai, Indian, American food (and more maybe?). They were happy to make Nico fried rice with no eggs and no onions, so it was basically rice and beef. If you didn't know already, one of Nico's favorite dishes is rice and ground beef. So this was perfect.
Sunday we went to church at Marysville Church of the Nazarene, which is where we used to go when we lived there. We saw a lot of people we hadn't seen in a while, it was really great. Nico even remembered to tell his Sunday School teacher that he was gluten free and he said No to a cookie!
After church we drove by our old house. They had painted it yellow and it didn't look the same.
Sunday we ate roast chicken and a bunch of yummy sides for lunch. That afternoon we went to the Kangaroo farm and fed kangaroos and other animals.
I asked Guy if he wanted to own a kangaroo farm and he said No. Good to know. It was really cool to see all the animals they had there.
Some other Sunday moments.
Nico and Tom raced to put their nesting dolls together. Nico spent several occasions playing with these nesting dolls on this trip.
Guy took a short trip to the beach that night
On Monday we took a trip to the beach right before heading over to the Grandparents Russell.
Other pictures from that day...
At the river
Looking for birds through his new binoculars (thanks Grandma & Grandpa!!)
Coloring eggs
Helping Grandpa barbecue our lunch
We left Guy there that night and we took Grandma with us to the beach cottage! Nico read Grandma two comic books before bed, and then me and her watched a girl movie!! 27 Dresses, it was very cute.
Tuesday morning we snuggled him up with blankets in front of the tv to watch a movie while eating his breakfast muffin. Nico definitely took advantage of their wide range of movie titles on our trip. We usually had time for an entire movie in the mornings before we would leave to head to Arlington.
Tuesday was a slow picture day. I took a trip to Safeway to walk around while the crew went to the creek for a walk. Thanks Mom for taking pictures! I love that he got a piggy back ride from both Guy and Uncle Tom!
Tuesday afternoon Guy and I and Nico went to visit Rusty and Ellen. They were our mentors when we were living in Arlington, so we really like to stay connected with them. They had a Thomas the Train set that Nico played with while we were there.
Tuesday evening was a yummy pot roast with potatoes and parsnips and carrots. It was very tasty. Then we said our goodbyes and drove out to the beach house for one last night before heading home.
Our trip home on Wednesday took 10 1/2 hours! I think we agree that next time we will break up our trip in both directions, and perhaps stay over in Pendleton on our way back to Boise. The traffic in Seattle area was very bad, we hopped over to the express toll lane thinking we could do that with 3 people in the car, but I think we'll be getting a bill for that, I think you need to have a flex-pass to be able to do that. Totally worth it, though! It would have added at least another 45 minutes to our trip if we would have been stuck in that traffic. We listened to my phone and even took a short cut through Alderwood Mall Parkway to get on 405. It saved us 7 minutes. :)
We were very tired when we got home that night. Nico's friends were outside when we pulled up, and he jumped right on his scooter and started playing. Nico needed that outdoor running around time. Then dinner, showers, a quick trip to Flying M, and then bed time! While we were gone, Jeff cleaned our shower tiles, it looked like a completely new shower. It was an awesome thing to come home to!!
Today we did some reorganizing in here and ran some errands. I can't believe it's already past Nico's bed time and it feels like the day has just started. Wow! Time is just fleeing!
We had so much fun in Arlington and are looking forward to doing it again next year! Thank you Grandpa and Grandma Russell for all the food and all the gifts and the hospitality and fun and adventure. We had a blast and can't wait to see you guys again in July for Nico's birthday!
