Wahooz, Treasure Hunt, Eclipse, School!

Guy stayed home from work last Friday because I had to be at my henna event very early. Him and Nico went to Wahooz and played miniature golf! Guy sent me a picture after they were back at home:

And here's me and my crew at the Uplift Festival

Monday was a fun filled day. It was the last day of summer vacation, and according to tradition this requires a treasure hunt. Evelyn and family were out of town, and Aadam and Sam no longer live here, so I did a treasure hunt just for Nico. In the video at the bottom of this entry you can see part of it, the part where he returns from running around the block to find his map. For the treasure I bought him a comic book. He was a little skeptical, and instead chose to play Rush Hour.

It's a game which he found while searching for the treasure. He forgot he had the game. Since then, he has played it every single day, trying to get through all of the cards.  You set up the board with cars and then you move them around to try to get the red car out. He is very very good at it! We are missing a few cars so he has used micromachines in their place, no biggie.

Then we had a trip to the gym, followed by the eclipse! We had eclipse glasses given to us by Allicia, who had a few extra. We sent one pair with Guy to work, and we had two at home. The video at the end shows some of our eclipse experience.

Tuesday was the first day of school! Evelyn and family were still out of town, so we walked to school just the two of us and we went into his classroom. He has his old kindergarten teacher, who has moved up to 2nd grade. She told me that teaching 2nd grade is her dream job. She is very happy with it, and Nico was happy to have her as a teacher again.

We started walking with Evelyn on Wednesday, and I've been teaching them how to look for cars so that they can start walking to/from school together by themselves. We're almost there.. they chose a spot to meet after the bell rings so that they can find each other to walk home.

Last night we lost power for about 2 hours. And tonight we have a thunder storm and SO much rain! A power outage and a thunderstorm are both very good reasons to not go to bed. Or so I've heard. ;)

Here's the video!

Wahoooooz

On Friday we went to a new splash pad, the only one in Boise (the rest are in Meridian), at Borah High School. It's right next to their pool but has a separate entrance. It is fenced in. We played in it for a while and then took a break on a bench outside the fenced in area. It was in the shade and the table had a built in checker board. Nico ate his snack there.

After the splash pad we went to the dollar store to pick up a flotation device for Nico. The ones you blow up and put on your arms. I put them on him that night and he wore them until it was time for bed. We went for a Strider ride while he was wearing them.

On Saturday we went to the market, where we saw a large Marimba band. Nico pulled me over there and we sat down and listened to them for about 30 minutes. Nico was mesmerized, he clapped after every song and then asked "Another one?" We were in the sun, so I eventually moved us over to the shade, where we saw Nico's teacher. They said hello and we sat next to them for a little while. Nico was very excited to see her.

Then we left to go to the other market, where Nico wanted a balloon. He got a fishing pole balloon this time.

That evening, Guy and Nico had some time together. They were going to be going to movie in the park every month this summer, but since that didn't turn out last month, they did something different tonight. Guy took Nico to the bookstore to play with the train, and then to the park to blow bubbles.

Saw Allicia on Monday and also on Tuesday. Sure do love them. So looking forward to moving day: September 13th!

On Tuesday, Guy rigged the Elefun game to an AC adapter so we could plug it into the wall instead of using batteries. This game is one we plan to play at Nico's party. An elephant with a long trunk shoots butterflies out and you run around with nets trying to catch them. Nico and I had tested it out last week, but the power of the fan was piddly and only about 5 butterflies made it out. So Guy upped the voltage from 6V to 12V. Now all the butterflies shoot out hard and all at once! A big improvement, but he is going to try to find a 7V adapter next weekend to tone it down a bit.

Then TODAY! Today is the day that we went to Wahooz to ride the go-carts to have a Mommy-son celebration of Nico's birthday. Nico was very excited about it. I brought the GoPro camera instead of my new one because of its small size and wide angle. Wahooz also has other attractions: a huge arcade, miniature golf, bumper boats, laser tag, and bowling. They measured him to make sure he was at least 40 inches, the requirement to be a passenger. Yep, he was tall enough! We gave the man our tickets, started walking toward the go-cart, and Nico started pulling me the other direction, saying NO! I pulled him aside and asked him if he was scared. It was very loud with all the motors of the go-carts idling at the same time, plus the super loud music so you could hear it over the sound of the engines. I understood his aversion. So we sat on a bench a little ways away and watched some other people riding the go-carts. He warmed up to the idea again and pulled me toward the go-carts again. He was fine for a while standing in line, but the noise, again, got to him. After a few minutes of happily standing in line, he started pulling me away from the noise.

Excitement that quickly wore off

Looking warily at the go-carts

So we got our tickets back and exchanged them for a course of miniature golf. There are two miniature golf courses, which I realized only after the fact that we had chosen the one with the line of people. Whoops! But Nico didn't mind waiting after every hole. He had much fun, and clapped every time either of us got the ball in the hole. He imitated curious george getting on the ground, eyeing the ball in relation to the hole.

Waiting for our turn. Can't believe we were lucky enough to catch a cool day.

So we get to hole 16. Hole 18 was right next to us, the place where you hit your ball and it eats it so that the game is over. If you hit the ball into a certain area, then this big Tiki statue shoots out an enormous torch of fire from its head. I found a picture of it, take a look:

So back to hole 16. Nico was finishing off his putting when someone successfully hit a ball into that certain area in the Tiki statue. About 10 seconds later a huge fireball emitted from the statue. It scared me and I jumped and cried out a little bit. You could FEEL the heat from this thing. I turned around to look at it and someone in front of us motioned to Nico and said "he's running." So, if you can imagine how Nico was afraid of the go carts, you can perhaps imagine a bit how this fire explosion affected him. I turned around to look and Nico was indeed running in the opposite direction. He turned to look at me and his whole face was quivering about to cry. Oh dear me!! I ran to him but he could barely listen to me he was so frantic. I calmed him enough to be able to run back and grab our clubs and my bag. I caught up with him and took him back the opposite direction. Unfortunately even if you back track all the way to the beginning of the golf course, you still have to pass by the tiki statue to get out. You can see in this aerial shot how that works.

Well Nico ran toward the fence, wanting to get out by crawling through, instead of passing by the statue. I told him that I knew it was hot and loud and big, but that the fire wouldn't hurt him and the statue wouldn't hurt him. I told him to close his eyes and put his head on my shoulder because we HAD to walk past it. I held him and he gripped me SO TIGHT while we passed it. And there was an instant calm after I did. Phew.

We returned our golf balls to the counter, since we didn't finish the course, and then wandered around the arcade. It is also very loud in the arcade. Nico wanted to try a few games, so we did, but every time we swiped our game card to start a game, the game would come to life. "WELCOME TO THIS GAME, PLEASE DO THIS AND THIS..." and then every game had loud music accompanying what the loud mouth was saying. Every time this happened, Nico backed away from the game, so didn't get to play much. We did win 20 tickets and redeemed them for a styrofoam airplane and a turtle eraser.

Photo booth

Then we made our way to Louie's. It is a nice restaurant that serves italian food. Spaghetti and pizza and other such things. We shared a big bowl of gluten-free spaghetti with meatballs.

Then home to eat chocolate cupcakes. I made a test batch for his birthday party on Tuesday. He likes it when I put a candle in it and sing him Happy Birthday, so I've been doing that.

Also, a slight milestone for his speech and communication: He clarified what he was asking because I didn't understand. He kept asking "What is this?" as he was holding a cup filled with a smoothie I had bought for him. I kept saying "smoothie" every time he asked. "What is this?" "A smoothie that I bought for you." "What is this?" "A smoothie" "What is this?" "A smoothie"…. Then he changed his question. "What is IN this?" !!!! "Bananas, strawberries, and orange juice!"

We are looking forward to this weekend as Grandpa and Grandma Russell are coming into town for Nico's birthday and for a family reunion. We are so excited to see them on Saturday!

Other pictures from this week.

Testing out camera settings

Climbing the "tree" in the front yard

Reading his big pile of library books while munching on a muffin

His very first lollipop