Friends, Wreaths, Gluten

I just read the title from my last post, "Assembling Furniture, Friends", sounds like we also assembled friends.

We received a big order of ribbon on Friday to process and ship to Amazon, which we did on Saturday (check out video at end of blog). On Saturday, Nico also dressed up in his Cub Scouts uniform and went door to door with Guy to sell wreaths. The Cub Scouts are doing a wreath fundraiser. He made 2 sales on his adventure. I think they plan to go again soon.

For pizza night on Saturday, it was Nico's movie choice, and he chose to watch a show called Oggy and the Cockroaches. It's a silly cartoon.

I got only ONE picture of Nico this week. Him and Grace are playing a game in this picture. Her and William came over on Sunday afternoon.

When Nico didn't want to play anymore he said, "Ok I'm done playing, you guys can go home now." Grace asked him why and he said, "I just want some alone time."

I have a sneaking suspicion that he was done playing because he was done taking turns on the Switch and wanted to play it all by himself. We all squeezed onto the couch after that (I say squeezed, because even though we have a big couch now, in this instance we all squished together just like old times in the Clubhouse), and we each did our own thing on our own devices.

Nico is enjoying Drama Club, he came home with this the other day:

Then I got an email from Nico's drama teacher telling us who got which roles in the play. They are doing an adaptation of The Wizard of Oz. Nico had requested to be the Wizard, and he got the part! He also plays Uncle Henry and one of the Munchkins. Evelyn's role is the witch. Can't wait to see them in the same play together.

Also, some interesting tidbits about Nico:

And in this one he mentions Clams as the best food. He had them for the first time in Portland this past summer. He has also been asking me to let him try sushi.

OH, speaking of food. A few weeks ago Nico told us that he asked God if he could have gluten, and God said Yes. So we're going through an investigative time that will be educational either way. We believe that God can speak even to kids (there's no junior Holy Spirit amiright), but we also know that our own desires can sound like God sometimes. So, we're going to try gluten. We've never been through a definitive gluten-reaction test with Nico before. In fact, we are not entirely sure WHAT his reaction is exactly. We just know that the tests show that he is very sensitive. The plan is to allow him to eat gluten for a week, Thanksgiving week, when he will be home. One gluten meal a day. Then we'll stop the gluten, and wait until his next doctor appointment in December to officially test him.

The night we told him this, he got so excited he had trouble sleeping. We spent a while listing restaurants and foods that he could try and he went bonkers after each one, especially when I told him we could go to Blue Sky Bagels. A few other ones we came up with - Pizza Hut, waffle cones from Baskin Robbins, Chick-Fil-A chicken nuggets, hot lunch at school (we may do this the following Monday when he goes back to school), pretzels from the mall, Olive Garden, biscuits and gravy, Belgian waffles, pancakes, and of course Thanksgiving things!

If anyone has other suggestions on what he should try, let us know! He woke up the next morning and asked, "What other restaurants can we go to that have gluten?" After school he asked the same thing. He is excited.

Okie dokie, I think that's it for this week! Next week we'll have a fun update about this upcoming weekend, tomorrow we venture to Ketchum, ID for the Trailing of the Sheep Festival to celebrate Guy's birthday!

So I'll leave you with a short video for now.

Assembling Furniture, Friends

In the unpacking we rediscovered the game called Munchkin. Nico is all about this game now. We play it before school, after school, after dinner, whenever someone says YES to his question: "Do you want to play Munchkin?"

Saturday was a good day. Nico's only chore was to empty a box in his room, but then he realized that one of my chores was to assemble the new shoe bench we ordered, and he begged me to let him do it. I said yes, of course, and so he assembled the shoe bench for me. The only thing I had to do was tighten a few of the screws all the way, the rest was him. We keep the shoe bench by our front door. It has been working out great, we have a place to sit to put shoes on now!

It was my movie choice that night, and I chose Singing in the Rain. It's a good movie that I hadn't seen in a while!

This past Monday we received the delivery of our new storage cabinet. It looks exactly like our other one, but we put this new one in the dining room to hold all our board games. Nico volunteered to put this one together too. It was a long journey; he asked me to take over for him after he put in an hour of hard work.

This is how he got all the pieces out of the box.

On Tuesday Nico arrived home from school in a car, his friend Grace had offered him a ride home with her mom. Grace and her little brother William were at his birthday party in July.

Nico walked in the door and said in really fast succession: "I invited Grace over today and she's going to come over with William and you just have to text her mom and let her know and then she can text you back and then Grace can come over."

Grace lives just down the street from us!

I texted her mom and then Grace and William came over a few minutes later. They are both very sweet kids. After all of them played in his room for a while, Nico and Grace separated off and started playing the Switch while William put together Nico's domino set in the living room. I really love these friends of his.

Tuesday evening was Cub Scouts. Guy is applying to become the secretary for the Cub Scouts council. They stayed late on Tuesday to stay for the council meeting even though he's not "officially" the secretary yet. He took notes just like a secretary is supposed to, and then emailed everyone the meeting minutes the next day. He is amazing. On a side note, he told me that before moving, he didn't feel like he had control over anything, and now, he has the power to change things and to affect his surroundings. His stress level is a lot better. He spent this past weekend cleaning out the shed and putting up shelving in there, mowing the lawn and trimming the roses. He says this house reminds him of his childhood. The floors, and the dim light in the living room in the evenings.

On Wednesday mornings, Grace's mom has started picking Nico up on their way to chess club, since Grace is in chess as well.

And Wednesday afternoons and evenings, Grandma Salisbury picks Nico up, then him and cousins and Grandparents go to dinner and then Youth Group. Afterward, Papa drops him off. It has been a fun tradition!

Today in Drama Club he got the script for the play they're doing, Wizard of Oz! He put in his request to play Oz, we will find out next week which role he got. Evelyn is also in class with him. It'll be fun to see them in a play together.

Nico has been really into National Geographic "Weird But True" books. He has been checking them out from the library at school. He brings up facts all the time, "Did you know that soap actually comes from underground? So it's impossible to wash your hands!" He used this line on me when I told him to wash his hands before dinner tonight.

That's it for this week!