Moving Day!

Well this week is all about the big move! Most of this blog experience will be communicated through video, which you can watch at the end of the blog.

It was a bittersweet week with an awkward moment at the end of Saturday, moving day, when we were tired at our new house and I was looking forward to going home and going to bed. But, we were already home. It was a strange feeling to be home in our new house, but wanting to go back to familiar Clubhouse to snuggle in for the night. First night at a new place!

Saturday night we ordered pizza from Smokey Mountain Pizza and waited 2 hours for it to arrive before I called them and they said their printer never printed the order so they never received it. They said they could get it to us in 45 minutes but it was already 8PM so we cancelled the order and ate other things at home instead. To make up for it, we ordered pizza for lunch on Sunday after church.

We woke up this morning to a broken dishwasher (puddle-jumping with socks on in the middle of the night - eek!) and a broken water heater. The handy-woman stopped by today and fixed the water heater, and will be back on Saturday to fix the washer.

Now on to some pictures, then the video at the end!

Friday walking to our new house with Avery and Ivy in the afternoon to pick up our key. I told them how to recognize our house so they know how to get there in the future.

Playing Switch with Avery

Friday night after receiving our key, we went over to explore the house. Nico wanted to be in charge of pictures.

Bedtime snack, the last night in the Clubhouse

Moving day! Pile of boxes in the garage.

Emptying out the Clubhouse

Avery eating a tomato like an apple while watching the moving men load up the truck.

Movers done!

The first boxes in our new house

Discovering old treasures

 Drawer trash

This is how perfectly our corner table fits into the dining room.

After the moving men left, time to eat Jimmy Johns!

Evelyn came over to help Nico unpack. Not sure he would have been motivated otherwise. Still have a lot left to do, though!

Nico doing spelling homework at my desk.

Tuesday, Avery, Ivy, and myself met Guy at Boise Fry Company for lunch.

Nico at school helping to fill up their class' bird feeder. The Bird by Bird organization posted this picture on their Facebook page, that's where I got it.

From the school Facebook page, pictures of Nico and his classmates making dog biscuits. Nico ate dog biscuit dough that day, containing regular flour. Oops.

Now to the video!

Labor Day Picnic, and Packing!

We are 2 days away from moving!

This past week we've spent a lot of time packing. We've made quite a pile of boxes in the garage. Once we pack a box, we take it to the garage. Keeping it in the Clubhouse would be difficult.

Step by step we've also been cleaning the place up so that cleaning will not be as huge a deal later. On Saturday Guy and I cleaned the screen in the kitchen, which had never been cleaned. If you remember how grimy it was before, then this picture will shock you:

It's like we have acquired another light in the kitchen. The sun streaming through is amazing. Guy says he doesn't know why we didn't do that before.

It has been fun to think about all the things we'll have control over after we move - even the things like yard work, Guy is very excited that we will have roses in the front yard and mentioned he'd like to check out a book from the library about roses.

We also packed a lot Saturday morning, starting with the books. We told Nico to not pack the books he wanted to read. He chose to keep out 2 Dog Man books.

Saturday night it was my turn to choose the movie again, and I chose Dumbo. It was an OK movie.

Sunday after church there was a picnic at the Grandparents' Salisbury house in honor of Labor Day. Most of Nico's cousins were there. Here they all are playing Happy Salmon. The adults played this game later, too. It's fun!

The adults also played the game Pit, to win prizes.

Grandma started them all on a treasure hunt and they ran around finding clues. Each of the adults held one of the clues. For one of the clues, Nico had to read a story to everyone.

Prizes! Each kid got to choose a small bag, and then a large bag for their family.

Nico played Switch with Kai for a while.

It was a perfect afternoon! Thank you to Ma and Pa for having us over and providing the yummy food. Alanna also brought a lemon cake that looked delicious! I gave Guy a huge piece with ice cream on top and he enjoyed it.

Tuesday Nico went downstairs to play video games with the crew after school. Avery taught him how to play Bomber Man.

School picture day was Wednesday. And... nachos for breakfast?

 The constant state of the kitchen. Boxes!

I'm putting together a video of our moving, which I'll post next week. Plus video and pictures of our new house.

Photronics Phun, and Back to School Night!

A few pictures from last Friday. Nico arrived home from school with an acorn hat on his head. 

After school snack.

Saturday afternoon we watched Detective Pikachu, quite an adorable movie. We coordinated with Allicia so that the whole household could watch it downstairs. We were only missing Jeff, who was out of town. Even some friends of Jeff & Allicia joined us. We all fit just fine on their huge sectional couch. Allicia popped a bunch of popcorn for us.

Right after the movie was over, we came upstairs to make pizza. It was my turn to choose the movie, but since we didn't have a lot of time I said we could watch a Yoshi's Island speed run that Guy wanted to show Nico. I was curious about it, too, and it was fun to watch. Nico has been playing Yoshi's Crafted World on the Switch and has been really into Yoshi.

Nico had a dentist appointment on Tuesday. Nico started talking about braces right away to the dental hygienist and how he wanted them. He said "I wanted glasses, and I got glasses. I want braces, and I hope I can get braces!" The dentist told us now is the time to get the consultation at an orthodontist, so we have that scheduled for November.

Tuesday night was Cub Scouts. Guy told me Nico was the only Webelos there, and that night was the night they planned their events throughout the year, so Nico got to make a lot of decisions.

Wednesday night was the Photronics Phamily Phun Day, to celebrate Photronic's 50th anniversary.

There was a magic man there that also made balloon animals, Nico got a parrot hat.

They had catered BBQ and an ice cream truck with free ice cream. But also 95 degree weather with a trampoline in full sun, plus two bouncy houses. Nico came home a little bit heat exhausted. He felt very sick so I ordered him to lie on his bed for 30 minutes and not move. I gave him an ice pack to put on his chest. At the end of 30 minutes he was completely recovered and was jumping around asking for nachos.

Zoom!

Nachos has been the normal snack every night. He goes through bags of shredded cheese like nobody's business. And speaking of snacks and food: I was not aware of the fact that Nico had money on his school lunch account, he has never had hot lunch or bought anything from the cafeteria. I got an email last week with a low-balance alert saying his account was at a certain level. I got the same email the next day, but the balance was lower. I kind of brushed it off, but then Nico came home from school and told me he had started buying milk from school, alternating between chocolate milk and regular milk. Oh! Ok. That's fine. I reloaded the account so it should last a while.

Tonight was back-to-school-night for the parents! I think I'm really going to like his teacher. I mean, all his teachers have been good, his teacher last year was great, but his teacher this year has a different personality than any teacher he's had so far. She is outgoing, and I have the sense that she likes to have fun, and even may like to be silly at times.

Right outside his classroom window, his class has installed two bird feeders. At any time the children can look through the window and interrupt the class to report a bird sighting. Woah! That's pretty cool.

Here's the note that was on his desk for me. He never finished it, and when I got home, he couldn't remember what he intended to write.

The exciting news this week is that we SIGNED THE LEASE on the house I mentioned in the last blog! Our move-in date is Saturday Sept 7th. I can't believe it happened so fast! Thank you, God!

Nico has had mixed feelings over the matter, but I think he is on board now. After a full day of playing the Switch with the kids downstairs last week, he said, "I don't want to move out. Why don't YOU move out and then me and Dad can come visit you once a week?"

Then after we visited the house last week and we talked about him having his own bedroom, the next day he said "Actually I don't really want to move out." After some gentle prodding, he said he liked having a small space, he didn't want his own bedroom, he wanted to be closer to us.

I picked up some moving boxes today and the preparation begins...

Spring Break!

Nico had a bit of a cold last weekend, with a fever on Saturday. We were planning a trip to see Allicia's Roller Derby game on Saturday night but I stayed home with Nico and Guy went to the game. He had never seen a game before so we figured that would be the best arrangement! We actually had a pretty fun night ourselves, we ate dinner and watched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Saturday and Sunday I went over to the Grandparents Salisbury new house to help unpack. All their stuff was moved on Friday.

Grandma and Aunt Ellen laughing.

SPRING BREAK is happening this week, and Guy also has the whole week off. We've had plans to go do some fun things but haven't realized those plans yet. It has been rainy and we've been working hard to get stuff organized for our garage sale and clearing the clutter out of here. We purchased a wardrobe and switched around Nico's bed so that he is now sleeping on top of the bed. When we pulled his mattress from the floor underneath the bed we discovered mold on the bottom, so we tossed it outside and ran and bought a new mattress.

Monday - went through all our storage in the cellar, pulling stuff for the garage sale and repacking the storage boxes.

Tuesday - sorted through Nico's toys. Met Grandma Salisbury, Bruce, and Rory at Red Robin for lunch, then they took Nico for a sleepover at the Grandparents Salisbury new house. Tuesday evening I had a henna photoshoot at Quarry View Park. The photographer took pictures of the kids (Evelyn, Nico, Sammy, Aadam) with henna and also Allicia with henna. I took a few shots of Allicia myself after we came home, just to capture the moment, since I won't get the professional photos for a few more weeks :)

Wednesday - went to Pojo's with Bruce and Rory and Grandma Salisbury. He got 383 tickets and had quite a bit of fun playing games and riding bumper cars. We went to Big-Os to get the oil changed, here are Rory and Nico sitting down at Big-O Tires.

Thursday - This morning Nico opened a package from the Grandparents Russell that had some fun activities in it, we colored some bird coloring pages and we picked out where he would hang up the bird migration poster. This was also a Lego sorting day. Nico sat down with Guy and I at the table and worked on a miniature Lego panda while Guy and I sorted Legos. Rain rain and more rain, so much rain, snow too. But mostly rain, hard rain.

Here's a picture of Nico tucked into bed ready to sleep tonight. First night he has ever slept with a TOP SHEET in his own bed. I figured it was about time. We are using a quilt now that Grandma Russell made (can't remember if I helped or not?) It is beautiful, though, and so soft. And you can see the wardrobe we purchased. It has a mirror in the middle panel and Nico has been enjoying that. We find him practicing his ninja skills in front of the mirror sometimes.

It has been quite a cozy Spring Break so far.