BED BUGS, family, eye doctor, hair cut, gg, woah that's a lot!

Well Hello! It's been a while! I think that was the first time I ever skipped a week. Let's jump right into it!

On March 1st, Friday, Guy woke up sick, with whatever it was that I had while in Redding. I told him to stay home from work and he quickly got worse. He spent all Friday, Saturday, and Sunday in bed, he finally started feeling himself again only a few days ago.

Jumping on the trampoline with Merek on Friday the 1st

Saturday visit to the library. I parked across the street and we took the Greenbelt tunnel to the library. A bit of fresh air.

On our way back to the car with our goodies.

Nico chose our movie on Saturday and he chose one of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid movies. Guy ate a few pieces of pizza and then went to bed while Nico and I stayed up to watch it. Those movies are funny, I enjoyed it.

Nico had told me about a STEM activity they had done in the library on Friday. On Saturday I saw pictures on Facebook that were posted of the event, and downloaded a few of them. Nico won this challenge - how many squares can you fit onto your popsicle stick without them falling over?

Practicing a magic trick

It was Sunday night, while Guy was lying in bed staring at the wall, that he saw a bug crawling up that wall, right next to our bed. He called me over and we identified it as a bed bug. Ah shucks! With a toothpick, Guy went fishing in the crack between the wall and the baseboard, and pulled out a shed bed bug skin. We slept in the bed that night, I was hoping that perhaps those two bug signs would be the extent of it. But, you know that's rarely the case.

Monday afternoon I pulled all the sheets off our beds and scoured the mattresses while sanitizing the sheets in the washing machine. I found NO signs of bed bugs on either mattress. Guy and I were casually talking about how to prevent a bed bug outbreak when he tapped lightly on the wardrobe and I watched as something fell from the spot he tapped, right onto the bare mattress. Boom. Another shed bed bug skin.

That dreadful feeling in the pit of my stomach - uh oh - they're in the wardrobe!!

We indeed found bed bugs hiding between the cracks on the back of the wardrobe.

You can only see one bed bug in this picture, but there were about a dozen scattered in the crack right here.

We decided to go professional, and we called around and found a good place that specializes in bed bugs. The treatment involves spraying a pesticide around the baseboards, then heating up the house to 135 degrees for 6 hours. Afterward, they sprinkle silica around the baseboards.

The guy (Dave) came to take a look before telling us whether he could do it, because we live in a small place he was worried about clutter, which can make the treatment harder to do. He said there wasn't much clutter, just that everything was all together in a small space. He said he could do it!  He said it would either be Thursday the 7th or the following Monday, the 11th, that he could do it.

So that night we moved out of the clubhouse and into a hotel for 3 nights. Dave asked us to remove all the clothes from the wardrobe and from our cube storage dresser and heat-treat them in the dryer and then get them out of the house. So I spent the next few days doing that. We slept at the hotel but then came back to the Clubhouse in the mornings for breakfast and school, then after school went back to the hotel.

When we discovered that it would not be Thursday that the treatment would take place, we booked another 5 days at an AirBnb close to downtown. We decided then to stay away from the Clubhouse. The bed bugs, having nothing to eat, would likely migrate. They can sense when someone comes into the room because they can smell the carbon dioxide and feel the heat of a body. If they are hungry, they can move fast to get a quick meal, even if you are standing on the floor for even a few minutes. To prevent migration, we had the door that leads to the main house sprayed with a pesticide. And so we stayed away. The only things we brought with us were heat-treated clothes, food, and plastic bags to put everything in. We left purses, back packs, bags, EVERYTHING, at the Clubhouse. Hmm... except the iPads and the Nintendo DS. We removed those the first day we went to a hotel, so we felt safe that the bed bugs hadn't migrated to them. And because the bed bugs weren't in the bathroom, we were able to bring our bathroom overnight bag filled with all our shampoo and combs.

At the AirBnb

The week that this all took place, my Aunt Liz was in town. I was able to see her on Thursday, and then on Friday there was a get together at my parents' house with Aunt Liz, and other family.

Saturday morning Nico and I researched which library we could go to to get the rest of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books. There were four more that he needed to read. We realized after leaving that it didn't open until noon, so we drove to the park that was a few blocks away and I let him play while I stayed in the car figuring out what to do (and because brrrr it was cold I didn't want to get out!) I decided to take him somewhere as a surprise. He tried to guess where we were going the whole way there. He finally got it right when I turned into the parking lot, Lakeshore Learning. I told him he HAD to buy something with MY MONEY or he couldn't leave the store. He seemed pleased with that idea.

He chose some magnetic putty, and an archeological dig activity where he had to excavate five stones from a block of dirt.

We waited until after noon and then ran to the specific library we needed to go to, and we came home with four books for Nico to read. 

For dinner that night we chose to go to a place called Asian Cuisine, we ordered to go. Guy chose Dark Crystal for the movie. Nico mostly played with his magnetic putty and came over to see what was going on every once in a while. 

We really took advantage of the opportunity to eat out. Sunday we ordered pizza. Monday we had Boise Fry Company, Tuesday was Jimmy Johns. But I'm getting ahead of myself...

Breakfast on Sunday (no pancakes, so it was toast with peanut butter and jam. No toaster, so it was microwave-heated bread with peanut butter and jam).

Sunday afternoon we visited the park again, and then got Nico's hair cut. 

Monday after school Nico had an eye appointment. He needs glasses, so we chose a pair for him and they should be ready in a few weeks.

Green is Nico's favorite color. These glasses are green on the bottom, and slightly leopard print on the top. They happen to look a lot like Guy's glasses, but not on purpose. It was the green that got him hooked.

Nico is VERY excited about having glasses.

The heat treatment took place this past Monday. We didn't bother coming home Monday evening, because I knew there would be a layer of dust on everything and I would have more time to deal with it the following day.

The next day I spent at the Clubhouse washing sheets and dusting, mopping, etc. No sign of bugs anywhere... yay! We are guaranteed bug free for at least 30 days after treatment. We are thinking that the bites were causing hives on Nico, and that's where his hives were coming from. He's been hive free since we left the Clubhouse.

After school on Tuesday we went to visit GG and Aunt Pat. Melody (Aunt Pat's daughter) stopped by and we got a few handfuls of seeds from her! Peppers, Cucumber, and Radishes. We'd like to plant them out front. We picked up Jimmy John's on the way home, then Guy and Nico went to Cub Scouts that night. There was a magician there that showed them 3 magic tricks and Nico came home with the tricks to show me, they are pretty good!

Wednesday was the parent baseball meeting at Timberline High School. We skipped the spaghetti feed this year, and just showed up for the meeting. It was a quick and informative presentation, and afterward we met Nico's baseball coach. He is on the REDS team. Practices could possibly start next week depending on weather, otherwise they will start closer to April. The coach is very laid back.

On our to do list: Make sure Nico's equipment will still function for another season. He may have grown out of some of his stuff.

Some quick snippets of the past two weeks. We are welcoming the Grandparents Russell into town tomorrow, as Spring Break is upon us! Stay tuned!

Wedding, Fireworks, Magic

Friday morning I headed to Pullman with my dad, he picked me up and we arrived around 3pm. It was my cousin Dan's wedding. Pictures from my weekend:

I got to sit next to my Aunt Mary Anne during the wedding

And my mom

 My dad and my brother. David was a groomsman in the wedding.

My cousin Molly and one of her daughters, River.

I have no picture evidence of Guy and Nico's weekend but Nico had his last swim lesson on Friday. They went to the Market on Saturday and dropped off their reading book bingo card at Rediscovered Books. He had enough to be entered into a drawing, which he WON, a gift card! Not sure for how much, we just need to go pick it up!

I arrived home on Monday afternoon. We just hung around the house the next few days, Guy had the day off, and we started uncluttering some stuff in the Clubhouse and down by Guy's desk. We've been watching Mr Bean (the cartoon version) for entertainment at night. 

Yesterday Guy picked us up some fireworks. We didn't get many. Sparklers, pop-its, some snapping ones, and some snakes.

Nico lit a lot of them! Here he is lighting some snakes. They're the hardest to light.

He would pick up the leftover ash and rub them between his hands.

Nico has been caring for a few things around the house while Jeff and Allicia are gone. They have a lizard named Sweetness that they caught, so Nico went every day to one of the neighbor's yards to find box elder beetles, Sweetness eats 3-5 of them every day. The neighbor's yard is all rocks. I went with him to help a few times. He also had to get the eggs from the chickens and bring the mail inside. They paid him for all this.

So, the blog is late being posted! A lot happened Thursday! 

Nico woke up with a tummy ache. We were planning a trip to the Toy shop to get a magic tricks kit but we decided to postpone it. But then he started feeling way better, so we went to get the kit. On Saturday while Guy and him were at the market, they saw a magician. Nico was chosen to come up and help him with a trick. When the magician did his trick and fooled Nico and the crowd, Nico said "but I don't know how to do magic yet" almost tearfully, like if he had known how to do magic he could have not been tricked? Afterward, the magician told Guy and Nico they could get magic kits from Toy Town. So they went there and found one they wanted. Thursday Nico and I went back to get it. On the way there Nico said when he grows up he wants to be a magician and an ornithologist. Like perhaps doing magic tricks with birds.

It wasn't until later I realized that he didn't yet know that magic wasn't magic and that it's actually just illusion and tricks. He was expecting to actually be able to make things levitate. I think he's warmed up to the idea of illusion, though, and Guy helped him with the kit, he was getting frustrated not understanding what the directions were telling him to do. 

Thursday afternoon Allicia returned with the kids. Jeff returned late last night from a Katmandu work trip, and they are packing up the car and are leaving today (Friday) for Seattle! While home yesterday, Avery was taking a bath/shower and did a cannonball into the tub and smacked his face, biting through his lip. Allicia took him to Urgent Care along with Evelyn, who had a bug bite on her leg that was infected. I stayed home with Ivy, we played Zelda and watched Moana, while Guy put Nico to bed. I had most of the blog update already written but forgot to finish it off last night before bed! Evelyn stayed over for dinner last night. Nico was so excited to see her after her being gone so long. He quizzed her on the states and how to spell them and other facts. Evelyn was very receptive to all of it and, and even shared an interesting fact to Nico about wolves, saying that since Nico is sharing info with her, she is going to share some info with him. So we learned that wolves are scavengers.

Here's Evelyn holding her water cup behind her. If she spells "Washington" right she gets to dump water on Nico's head.

Allicia asked Nico if he'd like to be hired again to do chores while they're gone, and he said no. hehe. I'll be doing them. Instead of finding elder bugs we are going to get a bucket of crickets from Zamzows to feed Sweetness while they're gone.

Ok that's it! Until next time!