My Husband, the dork

I know I've mentioned this before, but it seems like Sean is the hardest one of my boys to get to cooperate for family pictures. We did a photo shoot with my family at Thanksgiving in Leamington, and we only ended up with one good picture of the two of us together and he had on that bright yellow Steelers jacket, so B&W photo's work right?!

I just wanted to wish my sweetheart a Happy Valentine's day even though he is a dork and even though he got me a frying pan for Valentine's Day! I love you Sean!

Happy Birthday Sis

Well, we are to the last of the birthday's for a while. There has been a rush of them lately. I wanted to take a minute and tell my little sister happy birthday! She is the best little sister and I feel like we are getting closer as we get older. We had our moments as teenagers.........

Luckily we had Dad to sit us down and talk things out and help us realize that we really did love each other. I know I used old pictures on my layouts for my brothers, but this is my new favorite picture with my sister that was just taken last Thanksgiving (thanks Andrea for suggesting we take this shot!) Hope you had a great day Heidi! I was thinking of you.

I'm teaching an online Photoshop scrapbooking class and the word art on this page was done by one of my students. She did a great job!

Happy Birthday Brett

Well, I'm a day late, but I have had a crappy head cold all week and am feeling a little bit better today. Yesterday was my brother Brett's birthday. I tried to call to tell him happy birthday, but I just got voicemail. So, happy birthday little brother!

This picture of me hugging him is one of my favorites of us together as children. He is probably wishing I'd let him go huh!? Anyway, Brett I hope you had a wonderful day and hope you know I love you.

My mom called this afternoon and they made it to Cleveland for their mission. She said the weather was good while they were traveling and they are busy unpacking and trying to find grocery stores and stuff. They are excited to get working on Monday morning.

Work is crazy busy!!! It is good, but I think that is why I am sick this week. I've been working from 6:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. every day with little time to even eat or get ready for the day. I just haven't been eating well enough or getting enough sleep and it finally caught up with me. W have around 135 loans in process right now and have been hovering around that number for the past 3 weeks or so.

Sean is working with me and it is fun to be able to work with him again. He is wanting to get us ramped up to do more processing so he will be doing processing, training and marketing to other brokers to get business in the door so that when the low rates on VA government loans go away, we can still stay busy with other stuff. So, I think it will be good. I think it will be great when we get someone else trained so maybe we can take a vacation. I don't even remember what a vacation is.

I have been digital scrapbooking a lot lately and I am teaching a digital scrapbooking online class that has been really fun. It is interesting to see what the ladies have come up with.

We are in full swing with basketball with Tyrel and Trevin. It has been fun although I wish Travis would have played this year. I really enjoyed watching him last year.

We finished Travis' science experiment presentation board this morning. He did an invention instead of a project. He invented an electric ukulele. Funny huh? It wasn't too difficult, he got a ukulele, he got a pezioelectric pickup, he put the two together and plugged it into an amp. You don't really get the "electric" hard rock sound because the strings are nylon, but it does amplify the sound. We had fun making the presentation board. He painted it blue and then we made palm trees, coconuts, a sun, a title and a surfboard to decorate it with. He has been practicing to play "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" for two weeks now, so he is going to wear his Hawaiian shirt, a lei, and his swimming trunks and play his song in his little booth. He is pretty excited and I was excited to see him spending his time on something other than playing World of Warcraft. I'll post pictures after the science fair on Tuesday because I want to get him with his costume on. He has been trying to round up a grass skirt and a coconut bra, but no luck so far.

Photo Challenge

My Aunt Terri had a fun challenge posted on her blog. Here is the challenge and you can all join in on it also.

Go to your My Pictures Folder, find the 6th folder in that folder, and so on going to the 6th one until you get to the actual photos, find the 6th photo and post it on your blog with an explanation.




So here is the result of my search. This is from a photo shoot I did for Todd and Haylee in 2005 in Spanish Fork. I think Corbin is looking at Uncle Sean instead of me. Aren't you the lucky ones that get posted on my blog! I'm jealous that Haylee always looks so dang good in every photo I take of her. She is just photogenic like Tyrel is. I only ever have to take 1 picture of him. They always all look good. I have been called upon at various times to do family photo shoots. It is fun and I like doing it although I'm not the greatest at getting little children to pay attention and smile. I have ended up with numerous children in tears even though I bring treats.

Uncle Greg

Life has been crazy and I haven't updated my blog lately, but I had to wish my baby brother a happy birthday today. I did this layout of one of his baby pictures that is my favorite. He turns 37 today. We love you Greg! Don't you love those chubby little hands?


Some of my boys favorite memories of Uncle Greg are when he lived with us for a while when we lived in our other Elk Ridge house. When we would sing the "Family Night Song" on the line that says "Father and mother, daughter, son, together on family night" we sing "Father and mother, my three sons, together on family night". But when Uncle Greg was living with us, we would sing "Father and mother, my three sons (pause) and Uncle Greg, together on family night." My kids thought it was hilarious and sang it that way for years after Greg didn't even live with us anymore. They still throw it in every once in a while now and it has been years since he lived here.


He stayed in a room in our basement and it was "Uncle Greg's room" until we moved out. Jen always thought it was funny when she would come stay over and sleep there (after Greg had moved out of course) and the boys would still call it Uncle Greg's room. I think she thought she had stayed there more than him and wondered why it wasn't called "Aunt Jen's room". Even when Greg was living with us, he was rarely there. I think Jen probably spent more time sleeping in that room than Greg did. He is such a busy guy with softball and his friends. I loved that he would cook us dinner once a week as his "rent". It was great for me to have a break and he is a great cook.


They also always love riding in the truck with him because he has crazy music and love playing with his video games.


Hope you had a happy birthday and hope you can work it out to come up so we can take you to dinner next week sometime. Love ya!

I Met Someone Famous - kind of

K, those of you that know me know that I am a fanatic about "So You Think You Can Dance". Well, today, my boys stayed after school to do some missing assignments and I had to run by Wal-Mart to grab a few things on the way home. They went their way to find treats and I went to find the groceries I needed. When I was done and checked out, I was walking out and there was this guy that I almost bumped into as I was texting my boys to find out where they were and he was getting a sticker on his items he was returning. I thought he looked familiar but couldn't place him right away. Tyrel texted me back that he needed my ID for the thing he was returning so I turned around and went to customer service. So this guy that I bumped into was behind me in line and I figured out who it was. It was Thayne from "So You Think You Can Dance". So I turn to him and say, "Hey, you were on So You Think You Can Dance weren't you?" He smiled and said yes and I told him that I had watched him and that he was one of my favorites. My kids thought I was a total geek.

New Years Eve

I can't believe the year has come and gone. It has been a year of struggles financially for our family and we hope for a better year this next year. I have actually been swamped with work over the past month, so hopefully the loans all close and we can get back on track again.

We had our annual New Year's Eve party. I think all of the Nielsen's were able to make it this year except for Melisa's family and Troy and Lisa. We played games, watched movies and had lots of yummy treats (Haylee brought yummy pomegranate ice cream) Then, when it struck midnight we shot off our illegal fireworks and all the kids shot off their poppers. Grandpa Nielsen had the bright idea to buy noisemakers this year and I thought I was going to go insane for those 5 minutes that the kids were blowing them. They definitely were noise makers!

I had put together a Nielsen Memory Lane family trivia game with lots of fun trivia questions from stories I've heard told over the years. It was fun to test everyone's memory. Alexis actually won the game and she is only 9!