Catching Up

So it has been FOREVER since I did any sort of an update on this blog! So here is a quick history in pictures of the last several months:

Ryleigh graduated from St. Paul Lutheran Preschool. She got to wear a cap and gown and everything.


The girls had their end-of-year dance recital at the Pipestone Performing Arts Center. This was a favorite of the littlest girls ... they got to scream at the top of their lungs during the song "Do the Harry".





Tricia had her final Spring Concert of her Hill Elementary years. The concert consisted 99% of recorder music. The kids played songs to earn belts similar to karate belts. Tricia passed all of the songs and earned her black belt.


Tricia's dance group competed in a dance competition in Monticello again this year. Her group earned a "High Gold" and did just an awesome job!




Summer fun on the Barbie Jeep! Ryleigh is driving a bit better this year, but still tends to end up in the grass and stuck. Sometimes she can talk her big sister into driving for her.




Tricia's teacher for the year, Mrs. Nancy Siebenahler. She was an awesome teacher and Tricia definitely shed many tears on the last day of school. She moves on to 5th grade and the middle school in the fall.




The biggest part of May and June were consumed by the Calumet Players' production of Annie. Tricia was an orphan in the musical and sang and danced her way into the hearts of 10 sold out shows over two weeks. The cast consisted of over 50 people, 21 of them playing orphans. Tricia's orphan name was Betty, but she liked to call herself Betty Boop.



I am now working at Summer Time Fun, a summer program through the City of Pipestone. We have 40 kids signed up and on a typical day have anywhere from 25-35 kids that we entertain from 7:30-5:30 each day. This is one of the fun projects we did for Father's Day. The kids each had to bring in a stinky old shoe and we planted flowers in them. They had a blast picking out the flowers and helping to plant them.



So that is what we have been up to here at the Nissen household. Hopefully I'll be better about updating in the future!

Subway Art

The girls at Eighteen25 made this cute Subway Art for Valentine's Day. I have not gotten prints made yet, I just printed a copy here at home. I chose the browns/pinks frame and put it in this frame that I usually use for my fair entries. I paired it with one of the flower boxes the girls made and a graduation gift. I was looking for something to put on this DVD stand in the living room since Reno kept going after the candy that I had up there. I think this looks good.

Thanks, girls, for the cool print!

Project Life 2011 Week 5

Another Tuesday, another Project Life post! Here is a glance at what our week looked like.

January 31, 2011

Tonight we finished up Jazz Up January by baking some cookies. We had some frozen dough left in the freezer so the girls and I popped them on the pan and enjoyed some yummy M&M/chocolate chip cookies tonight.



February 1, 2011

Ryleigh just had to show me the trick that her doll can do! Quite the talented little doll she has, don't you think?




February 2, 2011

This is a project that I am hoping to get sent out to some Facebook friends before Valentine's Day. I better hurry up ... V-Day is MONDAY!





February 3, 2011

Today I had my first substitute job at PAS. I got to sub for Mrs. Baartman ... the elementary PE teacher! After playing dodge ball with 10 elementary classes (2nd - 4th grades), I have decided that I am not a PE teacher! My head was killing me at the end of the day.



February 3, 2011
Bonus Picture

As if a day spent playing dodge ball with a bunch of kids wasn't enough ... tonight the girls danced at the basketball game. Here are the two girls posed inside Tricia's Barbie box before the performance. They both did an awesome job. I am most excited that neither of the girls has even a spot of PINK on their costumes.




February 4, 2011

The girls have begun taking over Dave's bathroom. This is the shower curtain that they picked out to go with a bunch of other girly pink stuff. Dave is just THRILLED!




February 5, 2011

It came, it came, it came! Finally, after a delay because of the Chicago blizzard, my new Project Life kit was delivered today. I was so excited I had to open it up right away and dig in!




February 6, 2011

Super Bowl Sunday. I was less than enthused this year. I just have a hard time cheering for the Packers. Unfortunately, the cheeseheads won, even though the Steelers tried to make a game of it in the second half.

We brought the girls to mom's for a couple hours and sat at Woebee's watching the first half of the game. We headed home after that because the roads were pretty icy. So icy, in fact, that some yahoo came up behind me too fast, spun out, nearly rear-ended me, and ended up in the ditch. I am a very cautious driver on winter roads and I hate that people over-drive the conditions and put my family in danger. Thankfully we made it home okay.



So there you go, another week in our lives. Tricia is busy learning lines for her play. I am wrapping up my job at the Colony and getting ready to start my long-term sub job at RTR. Dave is working hard to support us until my job kicks in (and I love him so much for all his hard work). Ryleigh, well she is busy just being an almost-five-year-old.

Make sure you click on the Project Life link on top and visit Jessica's site to check out the other Project Life Tuesday posts. And if you haven't already ... head over to Becky Higgins' site and buy your Project Life kit.

January Create With Me

I wanted to give this idea a try ... Ucreate does a Create with me each month. This month we were to do a rosette frame. I decided to make rosette frames as my Pay It Forward project on Facebook. Here is what I came up with ...






I used one of Becky Higgins' printables to put in my frames.

Unfortunately, I forgot to email my pictures in so I was not included in the rosette frame gallery or in the drawing for a cool prize. Learned my lesson. I will make sure I email the pictures the next time I create! Here is a link to the gallery; go check out all the lovely creations.



I can't wait to see what our next project is!

Project Life 2011 Week 4

We have had a lot of fun this week, Jazzing Up the last week of January! Tricia is begging me to "Fab Up February" but I am not sure I can keep it up:) I guess I am not Mom of the Year material, one month is all I can do of daily mother-daughter bonding time.


January 24, 2011

Today was an in-service day for the school, so I planned on having the girls do a little American Girl / Bitty Baby picnic. I set out a blanket for the girls, got a little snack assembled, and the girls got their dolls ready. I also got each of the girls a new magazine to check out while they were munching away. Their snack consisted of cheese sticks, pretzels, goldfish crackers, peanut butter cups, and fudge stripe cookies. Tricia even set up her tea set for her American girls.





January 25, 2011

So I've noticed a theme for the week ... food. Tonight the girls made a doughnut-ball-snowman. We used powdered sugar doughnuts, pretzels, peanut butter cups, mini chocolate chips and red icing to assemble these little cuties. Tricia ate hers by the end of the night, but Ryleigh's is still hanging out by the Jazz Up January activities. This idea I found at The Idea Room.





January 26, 2011

I do not have many Valentine's Day decorations for the house, so I wanted to include some activities for the girls to do that I could keep for decorations. This one was fun. I just cut squares of tissue paper and let the girls stick them in a heart shape on construction paper. Tricia did not want to fill hers in all the way, so she just did the outline. She also did hers the way you were supposed to, with the eraser-end of a pencil. That method proved to be a little difficult for Ryleigh, so she just dipped the squares in glue and stuck them on the paper. Tricia was also much more meticulous in her selection of colors ... Ry just grabbed, Tricia followed a pattern. This idea was found on the Kaboose website.




January 27, 2011

First of all, Happy Birthday in Heaven to my big sister Tricia. She would have been 37 years old today. I still miss her every day and wish she was here to give me guidance.

Following this week's food theme, tonight the girls made some oobleck. Not edible, but food product nonetheless. Tricia chose to make her oobleck purple and Ryleigh chose pink. At the end of the night, they just combined the oobleck into one batch. They had a blast and made a major mess in the process!




January 28, 2011

Food again ... tonight we used the Perfect Brownie pan to make some yummy brownies! The girls chose to add mini chocolate chips to some, sprinkles to some, and butterscotch chips to the rest. I love my brownie pan because I love crispy edges. The girls would rather not eat the crispy parts though.




January 29, 2011

I love these little snowmen! They are so cute. And even Ryleigh was ale to do about 90% of this one on her own. And what a cheap little craft ... we almost always have all of the supplies in the house. Oh, and this is yet another idea from Serving Pink Lemonade. Can't tell you how much I love that blog!



January 30, 2011

This idea I found at our local Pamida store in the Valentine decoration section. I almost bought some of the little silver-wrapped boxes but then decided that the girls could just as easily make them. So instead, I bought the supplies ... floral foam, flowers, wrapping paper and ribbon. These will become part of our Valentine decorations too.




So that is about it for Project Life this week. I have one last Jazz Up January activity from the 31st and then we'll move on to bigger and better things for Project Life. We'll see what this year brings for my album. To be honest, I kind of miss taking a picture every day of our daily lives and there have been plenty of times when I almost snapped a picture thinking it would be picture of the day until I remembered I was doing the Jazz Up January activities.

Make sure you head over to Jessica's blog to see the other Project Life posts. And if you haven't yet, purchase the Becky Higgins kit and start documenting life!

Thoughts

A while ago I wrote a long and whiny blog. No, you didn't miss it. I never hit that publish post button. Mostly I wanted to express some strange emotions I've been having lately. But now I've heard from a few of my fellow classmates that those emotions weren't so strange after all. Many of us recent graduates are struggling, trying to find our new path.

Here is how I have been feeling lately ... like I have nothing. My brain says that I am crazy. Just look at all that I have: a husband who has put up with a ton and stood by my side as I struggle, two beautiful daughters who make every day worth living, a newly received diploma (signed even) from Bemidji State University saying that I have graduated Summa Cum Laude, I have a home, my extended family loves and supports my every move and I have a few awesome friends who would give their all for me.

Here is what I no longer have: I no longer have days that are filled to the brim with kids and family and work and school and the house. I no longer have a WORK reason to wake up and smile every morning. I no longer spend my day with 22 beautiful 2nd graders. In short, my body is coming down from being so high-strung for so long that just a "normal" life is just not enough.

I am struggling nearly every day with these emotions of not having what I need in my life. I am hopeful that now that my days are consumed with applications and (hopefully) interviews I will find a job that fills a bit of the void that is in my life right now. I am excited right now. I have sent out four applications and have interviews with three of them already lined up. Those seem like pretty good odds. Hopefully I'll land a job (or two) out of this.

I do know that I am blessed. I have so much that many do not have. I just need that one last thing to make my life perfect ... spending my days teaching would be the icing on the cake. If you are the praying type, please say an extra prayer or two for me tomorrow as I complete two interviews, one at 9:00 and one at 1:00.

Project Life 2011 Week 3

So here we are again. Tuesday. Right now I am listening to our President give his State of the Union address. I am not too sure about the state of our country right now. I was glad to hear the President talk about becoming teachers. I have already fulfilled that dream, Mr. President. Now I am just waiting on the job. Hopefully soon.

So, here we go. I am still working with the girls to Jazz Up January. We had a few days this week where either we had something planned that didn't happen or we didn't have anything planned so we winged it.


Monday, January 17

Today was one of the "wing it" days. Mondays are historically busy days for us. Both girls have dance practice so we fly into the house at 6:00 or a little after and scarf down supper with basically enough time to visit a few minutes and then read and hit the bed. Tonight practice was (again) canceled due to icky weather. So I had just planned on reading a story. Instead, I busted out Candy Land and the girls played a quick game. We also read Henry's Freedom Box, which is a story about civil rights, in honor of Martin Luther King Day.



January 18, 2011

This one didn't quite work as well as I wanted it to. I found the idea here, at Serving Pink Lemonade. I knew we had Kool Aid packets in the cupboard in a few different flavors. I (incorrectly as it turns out) assumed that each of those packets would be a different color, approximately the color of the package. I was wrong. Three of the four flavors we had turned out to be pink. I tried to mix the colors, but ultimately, we ended up with two pinks and two purples. Oh well, the girls still had fun I think.


January 19, 2011

This project is super cute and super easy. Super cheap too! This idea has been safely tucked away for a future school art project. This was was also from Serving Pink Lemonade. Simply use marker to color block pages of a phone book, cut circles out (perhaps the most fun was finding circular objects around the dining room in several different sizes), and then glue them in whatever order you desire onto paper. Tricia finished hers by simply drawing in the stems and leaves. I thought Ryleigh's needed something more so I quickly dyed some coconut green to make grass and she added the lovely yellow sunshine. Such an adorable idea.


January 20, 2011

This was one of those oops, we suddenly have plans days. Tonight we were supposed to rent a movie for movie night. But instead, Tricia had auditions for the newest Calumet Children's Theater production: Attack of the Giant Grasshoppers. Emma also auditioned so we ended up meeting the Czech family at Pizza Ranch for supper and then home in time for stories and bed. (Oh, and we ended up getting a call from the director at about 9:00 letting Tricia know that she has the LEAD in the play! We are going to be busy in the next month memorizing nearly 60 lines!)

January 21, 2011

This was a purposely empty Jazz Up January day since I had a basketball game to work at. Tricia met Maciah at the game and Ryleigh stayed home and hung out with Dave. The girl's team beat Redwood in a last second buzzer-beater. The boy's ended up losing, but it was much closer than their previous games.

January 22, 2011

Today started with Dave and Tricia running to Sioux Falls to get Tricia's new bowling ball drilled. Yes, my 10-year-old has her own pink and black bowling ball and pink and black bowling bag. Dave loves bowling and is hoping that Tricia will love it just as much. To entice her, he let her pick out her own ball. We finished the night by inviting Aubrey and Maciah to the bowling alley for some bowling. Ryleigh only stayed for one game but the other girls and I ended up bowling the full three games.




January 23, 2011

Today I took a page from the Muffin Tin Mom and had the girls make themselves a muffin tin snack. I found my idea here at Blued Eyed Blessings. I had the girls make their own English Muffin pizzas from ingredients placed in the muffin tin. They both loved the pizzas and made two apiece! (Oh, and yes, this is about 3:00 in the afternoon and both of my lovely daughters are hanging out in their bed-head and jammies. I really have to find a church and get these girls back to a normal Sunday schedule.)


Remember to head over to Jessica's site to check out all of the other lovely Project Life posts. I have officially ordered my new 2011 kit (turquoise edition) and it should be here very soon. I am excited to get it and get it put together!

Project Life 2011 Week 2

Last week the girls and I continued our Jazz Up January activities for my picture of the day. So far we have had fun with the crafts and activities and most of them have worked out exactly as I thought they would.

January 10, 2011

Tonight we didn't have a fun Jazz Up January planned since it was supposed to be dance day. However since school was closed due to the weather, dance was canceled too. So I scrambled quick and found this idea on the internet. The girls had fun first making their snowman and then decorating them with markers, glue and glitter. I love this idea and will definitely keep it in my bag of tricks for art projects.




January 11, 2011

Tonight we had a rousing game of "pin the carrot on the snowman". I used clip art to find a snowman and carrot and then printed them out. It is difficult to find activities that both girls will find interesting. This one worked pretty well. I was able to point Tricia in the wrong direction and Ryleigh in the right direction. Though we didn't really have a competition, Ryleigh ended up "winning" with this carrot. I tricked Tricia in the end by moving the piece of tape since she was using the tape as a guide to place the carrot exactly where it needed to be.




January 12, 2011

Tonight the activity was to complete a winter-themed scrapbook page. I had a fun series of pictures from last winter so I let each of the girls create their own page. I helped Ryleigh but Tricia pretty much did hers on her own. The pages will be inserted into the scrapbook just like those that I make.




January 13, 2011

Today's activity was a fun one. I saw these outdoor sun catchers on McMama's blog the other day. Before I went to work I made some colored ice cubes - blue and yellow. When we got ready to make the sun catchers I let the girls pick their colors. Tricia chose blue and Ryleigh chose yellow. We just poured the water into a pie tin and plopped the ice cubes in and then stuck them outside to freeze (trust me, didn't take long with the weather we're having here in Minnesota!). We just used some yarn so we could hang them outside. Grandma Peg loved these so much that she wants them to make one for her too. By the way, these pictures do not do them justice ... they are very pretty hanging outside.





January 14, 2011

No Jazz Up January or POTD today. I had a basketball game to work at tonight.

January 15, 2011

Tonight's activity was a tasty one again. We baked a chocolate cake and frosted it with cream cheese frosting. Yummy. I had gone to Brookings with Tonia earlier in the day so she could order her new kitchen stuff - can you say JEALOUS! She will have a beautiful kitchen when it all gets done.




January 16, 2011

Today's activity was somewhat delayed because Tricia was not feeling well. But before bed we grabbed the old magazines and catalogs and let the girls cut out pictures for a collage. Ryleigh's was mainly food stuff - a giant peanut butter cup, milk and a peanut and Tricia's had a bunch of shoes on it. Ahh, my girls are so different!



We are still going strong with Jazz Up January! Like I said before, the hardest part is finding things that both girls will enjoy since there is such an age difference. But they mostly love crafting in all its forms so I've had quite a bit of success with the crafts.

Make sure you head over to Jessica's site to see the other Project Life posts.