Halloween!

Last Friday was date night! Guy and I went to see Newsies the musical, put on by Music Theater of Idaho. It was AMAZING!! The next musical we plan to see is next January - Wizard of Oz. We'll take Nico with us to that one.

My parents watched Nico overnight. My mom sent me this picture of Nico eating his bedtime snack.

And breakfast the next morning - a banana waffle and some liver pate!

Thank you Mom and Pa for watching the buddy!

Saturday morning Guy trimmed all our roses. He spent about 4 hours outside getting it all done. All our roses are ready for winter now!

For pizza night on Saturday, Guy's movie choice was The Court Jester. So hilarious! A few days later I heard Nico walking around the house saying, "Paizley with the pezzle" and other such things.

Watch this clip and you'll understand!! In fact, watch the whole movie if you haven't already! It's great.

Sunday evening after Bible Study, the kids came up to the front to give their Bible Study teacher some cards and hugs because she's leaving to move back to Tennessee. Each of the kids had a chance to hand her their card and say something to her. Nico said to her: "Be safe on your trip and always remember me."

Trunk or Treat Wednesday night at my parents' church. I had never been to one before! It was coooold outside, but we made it!!

Our very first trunk stop.

We came home and Nico ate candy on the couch while we watched some more of the Newsies movie we had started watching on Tuesday.

There is a boy in Nico's class that is also gluten free. On Wednesday his mom, Megan, sent me a text with a picture saying that she was sending in gluten free treats for the boys to eat for their Halloween party at school this afternoon. They were also in the same class last year, and Megan would always send an extra cupcake for Nico whenever she'd send a treat for her son. Amazing!

He came home from school today and told me he ate 2 cookies, and won this jar of candy corn by having the closest guess for how many candy corns were in the jar.

Then tonight we met up with Jeff and Allicia and the kiddos to do some trick-or-treating.

Then we came home and Nico ate candy on the couch while we finished watching The Newsies.

Halloween and other such fun things!

Last Saturday was the first Saturday in a while that we had nothing going on! In the afternoon Nico and I went to the Discovery Center to see their new display, Mythbusters! They had several stations set up to test things that the show Mythbusters had tested. This particular one is: When you drop a piece of toast does it always land butter side down? There were several different ways you could "drop" bread. We tried all of them and used the provided Abucus beads to keep track of which way the toast landed. It was about 50 - 50. As expected.

 Build a house, and see if a gust of wind will blow it down.

How long can you hang on a ledge? This is HARD. I got about 5 seconds in before I couldn't hold on anymore. Apparently it takes strong muscles in your fingers. I thought it would be more of an arm thing. Nico did better than me.

Other cool exhibits: Try to remove the tablecloth from a table with stuff on it. I was able to try it and succeeded! And do you get more rain on you when you walk, or run? They had two corridors where you could either walk or run through rain. Then you go check yourself under black lights to see how wet you got. Apparently the test on the show showed that with simulated rain, you get more wet when running. With actual rain, you get more wet when walking.

Nico discovered his book of paper airplanes that was tucked away in the desk, and has spent a lot of time the past few days putting planes together.

He also started asking if he could wear two shirts, one over the other. He did that for several days this week.

Then of course, trick or treating! There is a video at the end of the post of that. Nico has become more aware of candy, and the fact that we've been keeping him from most of it for most of his life. So we're becoming more lenient. Nico ate M&Ms for the first time on Halloween while we were trick-or-treating. When I was pregnant with Nico I would buy the huge bags of M&Ms. I remember leaving a church service once at Marysville Naz while I was pregnant and sitting out in the lobby, just so I could reach into my purse and shove M&Ms in my mouth for a few minutes. Nico loves M&Ms and has declared them his favorite candy. On Halloween he also ate a Crunch bar and a piece of gum. That next day he had Nerds and an Airhead for the first time. Then he ate a Dum Dum! This is big news. We figure it's only once a year, right? But then while trick-or-treating he started asking people at their door if they had M&Ms, and he would spend time flipping through their baskets trying to find something he could eat. At one house he refused to take the glowstick they were offering. We talked with him about that. After we talked to him we told him he had to do 3 things every time someone answered the door: 1 - Say "Trick or Treat!" 2 - Take what they give you and 3 - Say "Thank you!" He did great after that!

 Nico the Ninja. Ivy the Bumble-bee. Avery the dinosaur. Evelyn the witch.

On Wednesday night, Guy & I, and Jeff & Allicia took turns watching the kids so we could all go to our parent/teacher conferences. Ours was first, so we walked to the school and sat down with Ms Lung to talk about Nico. He is doing really well in reading and in math. We are so proud of him! She showed us his first short story. He wrote the story by hand, it was edited, and then he typed the whole thing into the computer. 

Ms Lung said he insisted on doing chapters.

Then his first poem. Nico was adamant on not using their format when writing his poem. Ms Lung said he could do what he wanted as long as he included some of the stuff they were learning about (the 5 senses)

On Wednesday we also got a new Laser Moose book in the mail from the Grandparents Russell! Thank you! He brought it to the dentist with him this morning and read it while we were in the waiting room. As we were leaving the office after his appointment, the lady who was in the waiting room with us at the beginning was just getting into her car, and she stopped us to ask us what the Laser Moose was. I told her it was a comic book where a moose can shoot lasers from his eyes. She said she used to live in Alaska and that she has never seen a Laser Moose before. He he.

The Laser Moose book has a ton of disco balls in it. They get knocked off a cliff and come raining down on the forest and smashing into the ground. After Nico had his cavity filled at the dentist, he went to the treat drawer and found a disco ball keychain! The timing was impeccable.

Then of course we went over to Bricks & Mini-Figs next door and Nico made a new Mini-Fig. He made this one to look like Emmet from the Lego Movie.

Then we ran some errands, went to Target where Nico spent his own money to buy a Minecraft backpack. He is very excited about that. Then we met Grandma Salisbury at Costco! We had fun wandering around. I don't know how it happened but we ended up with a HUGE bag of M&Ms and a new car toy (Thanks Grandma S!) ;)

Brats and sprouts for lunch.

Nico has today and tomorrow off for parent/teacher conferences. This afternoon Guy called to tell me he locked his keys in the car at the dentist. So Nico and I drove to the dentist before realizing that the Ford has a keypad he could have used to get back into the car. Whooooops. Well, neither of us could remember the code anyway! Hah. I'll have to look it up.

Now the video!

Lumberjacks and Halloween

Saturday all of us drove up to the cabin for a Lumberjack Party! We were the first ones there and got to have Grandma and Papa all to ourselves for a few hours! It was perfect. My mom served chili and turkey meatballs and sides. Everyone was supposed to bring a dessert and on Friday Nico and I made Sunbutter Chocolate Pumpkin Cups to bring with us. They were tasty!

I put some Halloween Jamberry nails on Lexie, just like the ones I put on Nico.

They matched up their fingers with matching nails

Showing everyone their matching nails

Nico not smiling at the camera when I told him to smile. hehe

There was a contest to guess the weight of a HUGE pumpkin, and also games to guess how many candies were in a jar, and how many M&Ms were in a bottle. Nico asked if his two imaginary friends Bico and Dico could also place guesses, and Bico ended up winning the pumpkin! I forgot to take a picture of it but it's sitting right outside (68 pounds!) I think Allicia and I are going to try to cook it up and freeze it so we have pumpkin puree throughout the year! Then, Nico won the jar of candy. The jar is a beautiful clear glass pumpkin with candies in it and a removable lid. 

It was a fun and full day, we came home happy. Thanks so much for the yummy food and the fun time Papa and Grandma!

Monday was Halloween of course, and we met everyone at the Roosevelt Market and then walked home from there, trick-treating on the way. Just like last year! I left early so I could catch the Financial Peace University class that was all about real estate and mortgages. 

Guy told me that Nico was very focused on trick-or-treating, and he got a lot more candy than the others. He was really committed and ended up with 125 pieces. He has been sorting them, trucking them around on the Spring Fair trucks, counting them and recording how many of each type he has (in his new red notebook that Gma Russell sent his way). 

Check out the video of the Boo Bash and of Halloween at the end of the entry!

Nico had a doctor's appointment today and we will be starting a few new supplements. I am excited to see how they may help his sleep and stomach.

Today was our parent-teacher conference, and Nico is doing really well in school, has a lot of friends, and has very good handwriting. He is in the upper level reading group and the upper level math group. They said he's very humorous and they enjoy having him in the class (this was the teacher and the student teacher talking). When he stood up front during his Star Student week showing his friends his pictures, he showed everyone a picture of someone reading him a book (this would be GG or Grandma Russell) and asked everyone to make 3 guesses what the book was. No one could guess so he kept asking them to try again. No one could see the picture closely so the possibility of books was really endless. They say he's very precise, and is good at seeing patterns in math.

They showed us his journal, and I wish I could show you guys every page, but I only took a picture of one of them. He's been really into car symbols lately and so notice that on Grandma's truck he wrote "GMC" because that is what she owns. 

Nico was very curious about Horseflies so we looked them up in the book that GG gave Nico. We ended up looking up a lot more than just Horseflies, and we even got out the ruler so we could see in real life how big some of these bugs get. Horseflies are HUGE!

We heard yesterday that GG is in the hospital with congestive heart failure, looks like it can be managed with the right combo of meds and we are praying for health and recovery! Love you Grandma!!

Enjoy the two videos this week!

Halloween and Green Chef

Halloweeeeen! Saturday was so much fun. At about 4 PM we hung out with Allicia and Jeff and kids and we all ate dinner together in the "main house". They had invited some of their family over too, so it was a fun party and we ate spaghetti and eye balls (meatballs with melted cheese and a green olive on top). Here is Guy's plate (which I made and saved for later since he did not get home until 5:30-ish)...

After eating, the kids got into their costumes.  Nico initially wore his Fireman costume, then switched to Ninja Turtles, then switched back. His final choice was Fireman. I think the mask for the Ninja Turtle costume got a little old after a while. After Guy came home from work, he ate quickly and we were off! We met Jeff & Allicia at Roosevelt Market over by where we used to live. We went back to our old neighborhood to see if anyone was around giving out candy, nope! Just one that had a bowl on their front door step.

Nico and Evelyn had fun going door to door,  just like last year.  I got a video of it all but my iMovie has been crashing and I haven't been able to use it, but be assured when I figure it out, I'll be posting the video :) We spent most of our time in the East Boise neighborhood, love love LOVE those streets! We took a brief detour onto Warm Springs so that we could visit the Castle like we did last year, and that's actually the only picture I have of trick or treating! (The rest is video). And look, it's not even a good picture because you can only see a blur of green dinosaur Evelyn on the left, and no Nico. You can see Allicia holding pink bunny Ivy, though.

And a picture of our house with our carved pumpkin on the ground with two battery powered tea lights in it. Nico and I had carved it earlier that day.

We had a wonderful time. When we got home, Nico dumped his candy out on the floor and we traded it straight across for a whole bag of Nico-safe lollipops. The next day we did end up going through all his candy piece by piece and Guy looked each one up online to see if it was gluten & corn free. There were a few! Hershey's bars are OK, Heath bars are OK (not Nico's favorite), and then of course the Yummy Earth lollipops. Oh and Kirkland brand peanut butter cups.

So after we got home from trick-or-treating I ran to the PO Box because I got notice that day that we had some mail. I had been waiting to hear back about the big Aromatherapy exam I took a few weeks back, and I had heard from my classmates that some of them had received their exam scores in the mail that very day. So off I went, and found out that indeed I had passed the exam! I'm officially a Registered Aromatherapist! 

Sunday was a good day. Guy facilitated the Bible Study Sunday night since the leader had family in town and couldn't make it. He did a good job. Just like old times!

Tuesday morning we watched Ivy while Allicia and the other kids went out.

Nico asked to hold her so of course I let him.

We put another quilt on our bed because it's been chilly. Nico enjoys using the lines on the quilt as roads for his cars.

Lately Nico has been putting down his iPad of his own accord and playing with his toys. Sometimes I see bursts of development from him and it is fun to experience. He has been snuggly and loving and I've really been enjoying that.

I think Guy has pretty much adapted to the day-life. He is switching to a Monday-Friday schedule starting next week. 8-5, except on some days he'll go in late and come home at 8 PM so he can stay and train the guy that's training.

We are trying out GreenChef.com. They are an ingredient-delivery service. 3 meals per week, they send you the recipes and ALL the ingredients. Organic, grass fed, grain free (there are several types of meal plans you can choose from). I signed up for it because we got our first week FREE, which is worth about $100. We got the box yesterday and it was packed well and very cold. Beautiful recipe print outs and everything is separated in baggies for you. All you have to do is... chop veggies, and then add ingredients at the proper times. All spices are in little bags and you just dump them in.  Wet ingredients are in cute little jars. Everything is labeled.

Tonight was the first night we did a recipe: Mole Chili. It may have been a fail, we think because the amount of cocoa powder and espresso powder added to it was a little much. Guy says if we try to reproduce the recipe and use LESS of those two things, and use a better espresso powder, it would make a difference. It was very bitter because of the espresso, and it really wasn't appetizing to any of us. The "corn bread" muffins (no corn, made with coconut flour) were very tasty. We added honey on top of them. Making the recipe was a breeze and was so easy. I liked that part.

We have 2 more meals this week, a lebanese fish dish and a chicken egg roll bowl.  Looking forward to those. We are also getting a delivery next Wednesday as well. Two weeks for the price of one :) I am hoping that some of these recipes are good enough for me to repeat on my own!! I needed some new recipe ideas!

Until next week!

p.s. forgot to add that Nico, when going door to door at Halloween, the person would give him some candy and a few times Nico would take the candy, look it over, then hand it back to them and say "I already have this one!" hee hee

Halloween and Parent Teacher Conferences

This year was the first year Nico went Trick-or-Treating. I wanted to take Nico down Warm Springs to experience the crowds and the costumes and the kids and the excitement, I knew he would enjoy it. The candy wasn't something he'd be able to eat but we planned to trade the candy for treats he could eat. Jeff and Allicia were going to be taking their kids to Harrison Blvd in North Boise which is apparently a VERY hoppin' place to go in Boise on Halloween, but they decided last minute to stay in their own neighborhood, so we ran into them on our way out. We joined forces and stormed Warm Springs. I am so glad Nico got to trick-or-treat with Evie!! I took him up to his first few houses to teach him when to say trick-or-treat and to only take one piece of candy and then to say "thank you".

We turned off of Warm Springs and back into their neighborhood and ended up back home two hours later. This was much more time and excitement than I was expecting but it was a great thing. I don't remember the last time I had so much fun. Watching Nico experience something new like that and seeing him enjoying it and enjoying it with his best friend, no less, was awesome.

Check out the Halloween video at the end of this update!

We had Nico's Parent-Teacher Conference on Monday. Guy wasn't able to make it (what, he needs to sleep?) I really like his teacher! She says that she pulls the kids aside individually to work on their IEP goals. For Nico she is working on recognizing emotions, happy, sad, angry, frustrated, and using a mirror to make them himself. As far as I know none of his previous teachers ever did one-on-one time with each of the kids. She doesn't do all of them every day, but one or two a day.

The speech therapist wasn't able to make it to the meeting, unfortunately, but Miss Erica (his teacher) answered all my speech therapy questions really well. I asked if she thought Nico would be ready for kindergarten next year in regards to his speech and she said yes. He will continue speech therapy in kindergarten. He will also get a resource teacher coming into his kindergarten class every day for about 15-20 minutes to make sure he is doing okay and helping him if he needs it. If there's a particular part of the day that is hard for him, they'll come in at that time. That makes me feel so much better. Miss Erica said that sometimes it's hard for kids transitioning from such class (8 kids, 3 teachers) to a large class (22 kids, 1 teacher), so having the resource teacher there for part of the day will help.

I asked her about elementary schools, too. Because our living situation is somewhat up in the air when it comes to next Fall, I feel like we have the ability to choose which kindergarten to send him to and then when we do end up moving from here we can move close to the school. He is currently going to White Pine Elementary for preschool, and Miss Erica said that the Speech Therapist for kindergarten at White Pine is excellent, and so are the teachers. Then there's Adams Elementary which is a stone's throw from here, and a bunch of other ones. I am even considering public charter schools, though they do a lottery to determine who gets to go to those. A lot to think about.

Pictures from school:

Halloween Party!

Volcanoes

Snack time. With his teacher Miss Erica

On Sunday we went up to the cabin for a memorial dinner for my Grandma Salisbury (Nico's Great Grandma Salisbury) who passed away a few years ago. My Dad and Aunt Ellen made us Grandma's famous enchiladas and jello, and then we got to hear some stories from their childhood. They had so many adventures. One in particular that cracked me up was the story about how my dad and his brothers went hiking and found a bunch of salamanders, at least 100 of them, ("we probably should have left some there" Papa says) and they brought them back to their house in a bucket and put them in their pond. The salamanders started popping up in the neighbors' yards and squished on the roads. They got calls from the neighbors about them (how did the neighbors know it was them? hehe!) Salamanders were everywhere for a while.

Papa and Aunt Ellen telling stories

My brothers Jeremy and David

The boys chatting in the living room

Evie and Avery and Nico playing in the Clubhouse.

 Video time!