Legos, Video Games, Grandma Camp Awards

I came home from Spokane last Friday and picked up Nico from my parents' house, bringing home with us a crock pot full of sausage and sauerkraut that Nico had put together: dinner!

Grandma sent me these pictures from their day together on Friday. Apparently Nico REALLY won Monopoly!

Nico has ALL the money and properties!

Friday night it was a very simple decision to open up our lego from Grandpa Russell to start putting it together - we were finally all together in the same spot! Nico started in on it and got a lot done, we picked up the rest on Saturday and finished it on Sunday.

The lunar lander! Nico played with it for quite some time on Sunday night.

Saturday it was also imperative that in the afternoon we go to Fred Meyer to BUY Monopoly. Guy took him, and they didn't have the version he wanted, so he bought the regular version. Nico and I played it after they got home.

That night we watched Wonder Park (Guy's choice) downstairs (Jeff & Allicia and kids were away), and ate yummy pizza. We've had a long string of great movies, we haven't seen a bad one in a long time.

This week was the LAST week before school starts! And it's one of the only weeks this summer that Allicia and I were both home on a Monday, which is our day to hang out. So on Monday morning we sent the kids downstairs to play video games while we stayed upstairs to play board games. She taught me a new board game called Azul, and I taught her how to play Pokemon.

Tuesday, Grandma Camp started out at Bruce and Rory's apartment complex's pool. It's huge!

Guy and I had a date that afternoon for lunch. We went to Pho Le.

Afterward, we went to St. Vincent's next door and found an A&W mug we bought Nico, and a new shirt for Guy. Nico loves A&W root beer. 

Wednesday was another video game day.

Today was the last Grandma Camp of the summer. To celebrate, there was a BBQ and Awards Ceremony. Check out the video at the end of the blog! Each grandkid was awarded a serious award and a silly award. It was a great way to end the summer and look back at the same time.

School starts next Monday. Nico received a post card from his speech therapist, Mrs. Williams. 

What a great bunch of people he's got at his school.

The promised video is below. This has snippets dating back to June! Enjoy!

House sitting, and Matilda!

I was a day late with this July 4th treat, but it was still yummy! The cream cheese frosting turned out brown because I used coconut sugar to sweeten it. It turns out Nico is NOT a fan of cream cheese frosting. Oh well! All the more for me and Guy ;)

After pancakes and chores on Saturday morning, we headed over to the Idaho Food Bank where we volunteered for a few hours bagging up cherries. We had signed up for this a few months ago (they are booked that far in advance!) so the day finally arrived! Afterward, Nico and Guy went to the birthday party of two brothers and friends of Nico from church. They have a 3rd brother as well. Nico and them have gotten close lately, they are often "stranded" in the game room at the church together while both of their parents (me and Guy, and the brothers' parents) are practicing in the band on Thursday nights and early Sunday mornings. They play Minecraft together and watch Minecraft videos back in the game room.

It was a pool party. They stayed for several hours!

I texted Guy to ask if he was having fun and this was his response. This means YES he was having fun.

On Sunday we went for a walk after church. Guy and I walked the dirt loop next to the park while Nico played on the playground.

On Tuesday for Grandma Camp, they went to the zoo!

This week I have been dog-sitting and house-sitting Jonny & Alanna's house while they are away in Kentucky. On Wednesday, I brought Nico over to the house and Guy joined us after work. 

Playing Pokemon.

We ate camping food for dinner. Hot dogs and Smores.

Nico and Guy are going camping this weekend with the Cub Scouts and Guy wanted to try the tent out (we haven't opened it up for 10 years!), so we brought the tent over and they set it up in the back yard.

They slept in the tent last night and I stayed inside (heehee). It went well. They konked out early (8PM!) Nico went right to sleep and had trouble waking up at 7AM. He must have been tired. We learned that it would be good to have sleeping mats. They are going to borrow some from Jeff & Allicia for this camping trip. They leave tomorrow after work!

Today at Grandma Camp they went to the Kleiner Park splash pad.

And then tonight Nico got to cash in an early birthday present from the Grandparents Russell! They got us tickets to see Matilda the Musical in Nampa, ID, put on by The Music Theater of Idaho. We weren't allowed to take photos or video during the performance, but here's some before!

After it was over Nico said his favorite part was when Miss Trunchbull did somersaults through the air. They had her hanging from invisible strings. 

It was very nicely done! Nico stayed engaged the whole time.

Here are some pictures from this week with the other kiddos. We played Zelda and went to the park with them this week. And of course talked about Pokemon! Here Nico is showing Ivy a Pokemon in his Guidebook.

Nico teaching Avery how to play a new game on the iPad.

That's it for this week!

Children's Run, Homework, and Summer!

Last Friday we made the rest of our trip back home to Boise from Yakima. We stopped at every rest stop and arrived home around 4:30pm. Before coming home we stopped to pick up Nico's race packet from Papa (Capitol Classic Children's Run), who picked it up for us on Thursday. Thanks Pa!

Friday after arriving home, Allicia offered us all food out back on the porch. She had family coming into town that night and had made a big pot of sloppy joes.

Final count on the license plate game:

• Nico: 19
• Guy: 10
• Joanna: 9

We have 13 states unaccounted for, license plates that we didn't see on our trip.

Saturday was the Capitol Classic Children's Run. While we were on our trip, all of us caught colds. Nico caught his early on and it wasn't too bad. Guy and I caught ours later, but it didn't really hit us both until we arrived home. Saturday was the worst day for us, but we powered through the Children's Run in the morning. We dropped Nico off around 9AM at the train depot just like usual.

We drove downtown to find a parking spot and then waited for the race that started at 10AM. Nico's time was 13:29, he beat last year's time by more than a minute!

Check out this great shot from one of the race photographers

All the kiddos got free TCBY yogurt, so we stood in line for that, then we headed back home. I got into bed and didn't move for the rest of the day with a fever and body aches. Guy was a little better off, but still wasn't feeling too hot. I think him and Nico played 6 games of Pokemon that day! We had no energy to make pizza that night so we delayed it until Sunday.

Sunday Guy chose The Emperor's New Groove to watch while we ate pizza. Great movie!

Nico had been asking me for a long time to do "homeschooling" where I give him work to do during the day like he's at school. So I told him Monday we were going to start the homeschooling and he was so excited he could barely contain himself. He kept begging me to let him start working on his homework Sunday night.

Monday was back to work for Guy and back to normal life! We both were functioning pretty well by then.

There's a variety of things I had planned for homeschool. He rocked it the first day and stayed super excited. By Wednesday he was done with it and told me he wanted "to have fun this summer". Ha!  Sounds good to me, so we've stopped most of it. I told him there were a few things we were going to continue doing every day (things we were already doing every day even while he was in school) like him reading out loud to me. Regarding the workbook: I told him he could just pull that out whenever he wanted to. He's already pulled it out to work on stuff. He LIKES doing the work, but he likes to have freedom to choose whether to do it or not.

Tuesday we took Evelyn with us to the library for Pokemon Club, they both had a good time. I sit right outside the room in the kids area and do work. It works out really well. They both checked out a book (they each chose a graphic novel), and then we headed home.

Tuesday night was the first Cub Scout meeting this summer. They will meet every two weeks. They talked about rocks and geology, and Nico came home with two new rocks. I think the whole theme for the summer will be geology!

On Wednesday, Allicia offered to take Nico to the dollar summer movies with them in the morning. The movie was Puss in Boots. They got popcorn. Nico loved it. Allicia said they will do it again next week.

Today we went to the Scouts shop to get his new uniform.

Nico also went to visit Merek several times this week. They are moving from their house in a few days. I'm not sure I updated here or not about the house - we re-evaluated our budget and saw that we wouldn't be able to rent the house even if she doesn't raise the rent. So we're going to look for a different place in a few months.

Looks like the only pictures I have are from the race on Saturday! How's that compared to the picture-heavy post last week? At least I have a video! Check it out - the first part is from the race and then it's what our house looks like when you come home from a trip sick and can't clean up after yourself. Ha ha.

Until next week!

Mother's Day, and Pokemon

On Friday after school, Nico's teacher texted me this picture and said Happy Mother's Day, she also said "I love this boy!" I sure do, to!

Saturday was a laid back day. We labeled some more product to ship to Amazon, and the main house had "Odd Saturday" again, where they invite friends over for games and food. Nico and Guy have been participating in that when it happens. Then they cut out early so we can make pizza. My movie choice was "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day". It reminded me a lot of the Wimpy Kid movies, funny. It has Steve Carell in it.

Sunday Nico let me open the gift he had brought home from school on Friday. He joked that I had to wait until after church, but I convinced him to let me open it before church. It was a clay plate in the shape of his hand. I love it! I put it on the kitchen windowsill.

At church they had a photo booth for mothers and children for Mother's Day. Here's ours.

Swimming lessons on Monday. His class is much bigger this time.

On Tuesday we tried something new. We went to the Pokemon League at the library after school. They had a bunch of tables set up with mats to play Pokemon on and a bunch of Pokemon decks available to play with if you don't have your own. In the picture, Nico is playing with one of the facilitators. The rest of the kids you can see off to the right on the floor, they're going through their binders of Pokemon cards and trading them with each other. Nico didn't bring his binder, so he didn't participate. He will next time! If Nico signs up to be a "Pokemon Trainer" online, then he'll get free prizes for coming to the club at the library. We will do that! Nico and I, and Nico and Guy have been playing Pokemon at home this past week. He also brings his Pokemon bin (which holds all his decks for playing) over to Merek's house sometimes when he visits.

That evening, Nico didn't have Cub Scouts, so Guy and Nico were able to come with me to Liz's graduation (Bruce & Rory's mom). She graduated from U of I with her Bachelors. It was exciting to see!! We sat next to Papa and Grandma Salisbury, and Bruce and Rory.

Walking back from the graduation to the parking garage. Guy found some coffee at the reception so he grabbed some. Nico went for some chamomile tea.

On Wednesday I sent Nico to swimming lessons with... a bath mat. It did not do a very good job of drying him off. It was way too small. Oops. At least he's smiling. Guy sent me this picture and "Towel too small".

Today Nico had a field trip. His whole class rode the city bus downtown. Nico has been researching the US Bank building, and his classmates are all researching downtown buildings too, so they took a walking tour of downtown Boise all day today. They stopped at the Grove plaza to eat lunch. It was a mix of rain and sun, so I sent a hat and an umbrella with him. They were supposed to catch the bus back to school, but they MISSED it! The class walked all the way back to Adams from downtown. Wowza! Lots of exercise today.

I asked him to tell me a story about today:

"We went to the Zion bank and we went to the US Bank." Cool what did you guys do there? "We just looked at it and then we, the only place we went inside was Zions bank because it's really famous because it's the tallest building in Idaho."

I called the landlord of the house across the street, and she said she still hasn't heard anything about their specific move out date. She told me their lease is up at the end of June, and then she will spend the next month painting. I told her we're willing to wait for it, so she asked me a little more about us. I told her where we're living now, and that Nico is going to Adams and we'd like to stay in the district. She mentioned the rent would probably be going up (out of our price range), but she said nothing has been decided yet and to call her in the middle of June. Currently lawn care is included in rent, so I asked if she'd be willing to drop the rent if we took care of the yard and she said the owners have had bad experiences with letting tenants do that in the past. I'm hoping they will make an exception for us, but I'll wait until June to touch base with her again and talk about all that.

Still hoping beyond hope!