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!
