Games, VBS, and the Grandparents Russell!

Last Friday our church had a family game night. I accidentally left my phone at home, so we have no evidence! It wasn't board games, it was outdoor games, most of which included water and water balloons. It was fun but wet!

On Saturday I did henna at the market and then for pizza that night Nico chose Three Stooges to watch. We had the downstairs available because our housemates were out of town. We spent a lot of time down there this past week playing video games!

Long range Match-a-Pair-of-Birds game.

VBS started on Monday.

Tuesday was Grandma Camp day - Box City! They used up old boxes to build stuff - Bruce and Nico built a penguin! Nico is inside the penguin, you can see a bit of his face. The part at the bottom is where eggs come out.

This is from Papa's Grandpa Camp project. These are cuttings from another plant that he's showing them how to grow.

His tallest card stack yet!

On Wednesdays Nico is going to start going to the Youth Group at Papa's and Grandma's church. They are taking all the grandkids there! What fun! This Wednesday night was Messy Game Night. They played Twister with ketchup, mustard, syrup, and flour on the different colors. Nico came home smelling like syrup! He had a lot of fun though. He told me that they talked about "messy hearts", and about how sin makes your heart messy.

And then today, Grandpa and Grandma Russell came into town!! Grandma brought a new shape of cookies with her so we could make Sponge Bob cookies! I put some of the colors into henna cones so they would be easy to apply. Nico did a great job!

He opened some gifts from Grandma and Grandpa, one of them was a pair of SpongeBob pajamas! Grandma made the bottoms, they fit great with room to grow!

A book before bed time.

We will see them again tomorrow! We've got a fun birthday weekend coming up.

Birthday and a Boo Bash!

Friday after school Nico and I went on an hour long bike ride on the greenbelt. Nico brought home an activity calendar from school and you can color in a star every time you spend 30 minutes exercising. If you fill in all the stars you get a free pass to Wahooz.

For dinner that night we made "Crabby Patties", Spongebob style. Nico even put onion and tomato on his burger because that's how you actually make one on the Spongebob show! Eating Crabby Patties while watching Spongebob, we thought it was appropriate :)

While we were over at Grandma and Papa's house last Tuesday, while Nico was home from school sick, he discovered a drawing book in their living room that Rory must have left there. He practiced drawing from it, and when we got home that afternoon he gave me cash so that I could purchase him a similar drawing book from Amazon. It arrived on Friday! Here he is drawing.

Saturday was Guy's birthday! We went to Touch-A-Truck in the morning. Nico got to sit in a lot of different kinds of trucks.

After that we went for a little walk on the greenbelt, we hit the post office and the library.

Nico wanted to catch a leaf that was falling from a tree. We found some trees that were dropping lots of leaves, and he caught one!

That evening we made pizza and watched Matilda downstairs in the basement because Jeff and Allicia and the kiddos were out of town. Then we cut Guy's birthday cake and ate a few pieces of that! If you remember, we were trying to get to the bottom of Nico's tummy aches. We went a few days without one, we pulled all sugar out of his diet. On Saturday night we let him have a piece of Guy's cake, and the tummy ache came back! So we know sugar is involved somehow!

On Tuesday we went to visit GG and Aunt Pat. Melody was there and Nico brought out the US map that he had brought with him and they looked at that together for a while.

After leaving GG's house, we stopped at the Farmstead. We met Guy there, and Jeff and Allicia and the kiddos. First stop was the huge inflatable monster maze. 

Then tonight was the Boo Bash at Nico's school. He is going to be a ninja again this year for Halloween. Yes this is the THIRD year Nico is wearing his ninja costume! That was quite a good investment! Not that it cost much.. he he.  Here he is walking with Ivy.

Nico won the cake walk on his first time. Apparently Evelyn won the cake walk on her first time, too. It was a strange coincidence. Nico picked out these purple spider web gluten free cupcakes. Evelyn picked out a spider cake! Evelyn was standing on #1, Nico was standing on #2. Not at the same time, they had to be in different rooms because the 3rd - 6th graders were separate.

It's tradition... eat some of the cake you won at the cake walk this very night!

That's it for this week!