It's the last day of the year.

I thought I would beat the "I'm going to start exercising on January 1st" rush and start exercising on the last day of this year. It actually started the day before when I hiked Camelback Mountain with my sister-in-law, Annika and some of our kids. It was hard and yes, I felt out of shape, but I didn't die like I did the last time I hiked Camelback in November. I decided I might try running this morning. I started by putting on exercise clothes (sometimes this is as far as I get), then I put on my watch, found my shuffle, put on my sunglasses, took some pics of me getting ready to exercise (this all took quite a while...maybe I was hoping that I wouldn't actually have any more time to run), then there was nothing left to do, but run, so off I went. 

I am happy to report that I ran for 36 minutes...well, o.k., it was more of a jog, but the important thing to remember is that I kept moving and  it felt o.k. I was encouraged. I think I'll try it again soon.

One + One =38 1/2

Maurio & Dave

All from two people falling in love...

(I wish my blog was wide enough to accommodate  this image, but you get the idea)

I just have to say how much I enjoy Maurio's friendship. Whenever I'm with her I get a two-fer...I enjoy her company and wisdom AND it's therapeutic at the same time. She and Dave are off to Chile' in January to serve an 18 month mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Can you imagine how monumental it was to get their entire family together for this photo? This was important to Maurio and I think it shows how much her family loves her. She truly fills the role of Matriarch. She's just awesome. Dave is awesome, too...and funny. They seem like a good team. I get a kick out of them together. The Chile', Concepcion Mission is going to love them. I'm so excited that our friend, MJ Roberts, is in the same mission.

I am thankful for...

Just a note on Thanksgiving Day:

Thanksgiving is different this year in some ways. We're staying home. We normally go up to Prescott to celebrate with Brian's brother, Kevin, and his family, but Kevin's wife, Tracy, lost her dad earlier this fall and so she is spending Thanksgiving with her mom. Although we will miss seeing them this year, our hearts and prayers go out to Tracy, her family, her mom and siblings for their loss this year and the many others who celebrate this season without loved ones. 

But, unlike Christmas, where things can, unfortunately, get confused, there is no mistaking that Thanksgiving is a day for Giving Thanks and one thing that doesn't change is Love of Family and the Turkey Trot. The Nissens are only being represented at the Turkey Trot by one this year...Emma. Next year will be my year, as I do so love the Turkey Trot and it's community-ness. This year my brush with a Turkey will be in the kitchen as we get to be host to family, which we also love.

Emma and her friend, Brittany, getting ready to leave for the Turkey Trot...and my sweet husband, Brian, taking them...

with his 1000 page Truman book, of course, until the race starts...just in case there's a little down time. I offered him my camera, but Truman won out. :-)

So, I am thankful for so much this year, that it is hard for me to even begin to make a list, but somewhere in there is my family & friends (near and far) who continually bless my life, paper towels (a luxury we could not afford for some time),prayer, the Gospel in my life with Christ at it's center, even trials that help me draw closer to the ones I love and remind me that God watches over all and is mindful of each one of us. I know that he is mindful of me. I am reminded of this daily in the little things...even paper towels, which we now have.

Maybe we will see you next year, little salt and pepper shakers left in their box this year in Prescott. Until then...I end with Emma's list of things she is thankful for.

1. food
2. God's creations
3. clothes
4. Earth
5. trees (air)
6. Gospel
7. life
8. body
9. water
10. family
11. knowledge
12. ability to move
13. Birth
14. medicine
15. sight
16. hearing
17. challenges
18. celestial kingdom
19. friends
20. teachers
21. blankets
22. soap
23. a home
24. cars
25. hands
26. feet
27. mouth
28. ears
29. eyes
30. nose
31. and each and everyone of our differences
32. talents
33. Eternity

Wishing you all a Happy Thanksgiving Day with love, from me!

P.S. I just found out that Emma and Brittany got all pumped up to run the 10K instead of the 2 mile run!

Firas & Enas: Portrait Session

I loved getting to know Firas and Enas and their families. Their reception was held at The Castle at Ashley Manor in September. Earlier in the day we went to the Castle for a quick portrait session. I thought that Firas and Enas looked like stars from a by gone era with a touch of glam. The night before the reception was a traditional Henna Party (coming up in a future blog...I'm a little backwards, I know.) although Enas' Henna tattoos were applied by an artist prior to the party. You can see the intricate designs below. Here are some of my faves from our session.

More to come!

Date Night & Emma

We look forward to Date Night all week. We usually go out on Friday night. We love to go to the movies. We have our Harkins cups so we only have to pay $1 for a drink. Date night is supposed to be a time for just the two of us to have some time to ourselves sans children. Well, modern technology has made that a little trickier. Brian and I saw "2012" last night. (I admit we were desperate to see something. It was either "2012" or the ever popular "New Moon". We may have been desperate, but no movie is worth a line for me and definitely not for Brian.) If you go in with low expectations (which we did) and don't take it too seriousy (which we didn't) it was pretty entertaining and the special effects were fun to watch. Before we left I gave instructions for Emma to be in bed by 9 p.m. I really didn't even care if it was 10 so long as everyone was happy. We called her at 8:45 p.m., just before the movie started and said goodnight and how we wouldn't be able to talk to her now since the movie was about to begin. "O.k.", she said. "I'm just going to finish watching my movie and then I'll go to bed.", she said. Twenty minutes later, we got our first phone call. It was less disturbing to answer the phone quietly than to climb over people to get out and talk. She has called in tears before, so we answered. It could've been an emergency...but it wasn't.

Us:  "Hello...Emma? Is everything o.k.?"  
Emma: "Hi! Watcha doin!?" 
Us:  "Emma, we can't talk to you right now. Bye." 


She called 6 or 7 more times. It may sound unfeeling, but I ignored them, knowing she was o.k. and just feeling chatty and she obviously was completely disregarding my 9 p.m. bedtime request from earlier in the evening. She called a last time right when we got into the car to drive home...it was 11:45 p.m.! She said, "Call me when you get to Gilbert Rd." I said, "O.k." Why not?? Why was she still up, anyhow?? I did call her at Gilbert Rd. and the 60. Adam answered and told me she was asleep, but the phone kind of woke her up. Oops.

She left us this note on the door.

She still loved us, even though we ignored her calls. It was nearly midnight when she finally fell asleep...with the lights still on in her room. Hey, it's hard work waiting up for mom and dad. She nearly made it.

Oh, Emma...our little Eveready Bunny.

I kissed her goodnight and turned off the light.

The next day (today) I explained to her that when it's our Date Night and we're in a movie, she can't call us all the time. Then it stops being a Date Night and it also disturbs the people around us. Phone calls are only for emergencies. She said, "Well, can I text you then?!" "Uh...No...not that either." We'll see how she does next week.

On the topic of dates: On Friday, Emma told me in the morning, "Sometimes when I'm in school, I miss Dad, so we're having our own date tomorrow...First, we're going to do my assigned room, then we're going to read scriptures, then write in our journals and then go to Q.T." This was Emma's plan for her date with her Dad. So this morning, after cleaning, Brian and Emma went on their little date, just the two of them and I didn't call or text them one time! Now that's a date!

Now that's how you do business!

I was already a fan of Dunn Edwards Paint, but now I'm REALLY a fan! 

If you treat me right, I will shout it from the rooftops and you'll probably be my friend for life. I'm not going to waste words on what happens if you don't treat me right...but let's just say that I don't think you'll be getting a Christmas card from me anytime soon.

Back to my little shout out about Dunn Edwards paint: I think the quality of their paint is outstanding. It goes on smooth and dries even smoother. I had such great results painting the wainscoting in my hall bathroom with it a few years back that it actually made me excited about painting. Well, the opportunity has presented itself with a current little project I'm doing. I can actually use the same paint as the bathroom. I am painting a wall of wainscoting in my living room that my father-in-law (Jimbo) helped me hang recently. (I am loving it and will take photos when it's finished!) So, I get everything prepped and taped and ready to go. I even took the paint down to the store yesterday to have them really shake it up good. When I opened it this morning, it seemed good, but just a little thick. I didn't remember it being quite so thick, but I thought, "Well, it is good quality paint so it's not going to be thin."  I started painting the edges and I could just tell that it was too thick, even for quality paint. That back of the can said you can add a little water to improve the consistency, so I drive back down to the D.E. store on Southern and Gibert Rd. I just wanted them to mix in a little water to thin it out, but I wanted them to use their turbo charged mixer so it was a thorough mix job. Kevin, the manager, came out and talked with me about my situation and told them to mix up a brand new gallon of paint for me. My can was 3 years old, but well preserved, but he did not make me feel like he was doing anything more than taking care of the customer. I  just love when companies care! Now I am a Double Fan of Dunn Edwards and will pay the extra for great paint and great service. Thank you Dunn Edwards for making my day. I'm off to paint!!

It's a little thing.

While driving around this morning, running errands, I listened to the Diane Rehm show  on NPR. Diane was doing an interview with Joshua Bell (you can listen to the segment and hear the interesting story about his violin on Diane's link), the world famous violinist. Joshua Bell has been on my radar lately, after receiving an email containing the story of him playing incognito in the Washington DC Metro Station in 2007. He talked about his new album, "At home with friends". He plays duets with a variety of people from Marvin Hamlisch to Rachmaninov (through innovative technology (Zenph re-performance) they were able to isolate Rachmaninov's piano playing from a previous duet and Joshua played with the recording...it was moving and amazing). I felt so enlightened. The music, the story...it gave me a little burst of joy and I found myself getting teary as I drove home from my errands. I love those moments. It made me feel grateful for other things, like for instance: WD-40. It's a little thing, I know, but we have not had WD-40 at our house for years (I don't know why) and I bought a can yesterday ( with the new and improved "smart straw") and immediately started smart strawing my way through my house applying it to anything that squeaked, even wishing for more squeaky things just so I could de-squeak them. I had years of de-squeaking to catch up on. It brought me such pleasure. Why did I wait so long?! Now if I could only WD-40 my neighbor's dogs that wake me up with their incessant barking every morning between 4-5 a.m. How can their owners sleep through it??

Olivia & Christopher: Love 'em!

One advantage to being the oldest in a family is that your younger siblings are still having children when you have stopped, thereby giving a person (like me) a much needed outlet to having little people around when her own little people have gotten bigger. Hooray for being an Aunt! I just love these little peeps.

A Side Note: The other thing that I am pretty excited about, that I just found today is that I can skip the middle man in uploading photos to my blog because Google has now made some much needed changes for people like me to upload photos. When I say "people like me", I mean people who couldn't just upload from their desktop or computer for whatever reason AND who also want larger photos on their blog. You can make your photos larger right here on your blog. I do still size them in Photoshop, but I can just upload directly from my desktop! I may be the last person on the planet to know this, but I can't tell you how happy this makes me. Maybe I'll be a little better at blogging more frequently now that there is one less step.

Here's How to do it:

Log in to your blog.

Select Customize.

Then Settings.

Next the Basics tab.

On the Basics page, scroll down to the bottom until you get to Global Settings.

Underneath Global Settings, look at "Select post editor" and

Select "Updated editor". It has the latest features.

The uploader for photos is much better and much more compatible with mac...at least with my mac AND it gives you the option to select the size of your photos underneath the photo after it is uploaded, so I chose the largest on this post to see what it would give me and it worked out great. I DO size my photos in photoshop first for my blog, but I was never able to go from my computer to the blog without first going to Photobucket and copying the HTML code for the photo. Now, I don't even have to deal with the HTML. Hooray! Let me know how it works for you. Good Luck!

Roxxi, Van & Marley

Roxxi and I met in a photography class at MCC. We just happened to be sitting next to each other in the front row. That front row seating arrangement grew into a friendship. Roxxi has so many talents: photography, hair, sewing, just to name a few. Roxxi was just barely pregnant with Marley when we met and this week I finally got to meet Marley in person. She is just barely a year old and already such a busy little muffin. She was pretty steady on her feet since she's already been walking for a few months, so she had no trouble running away from us. She kept us moving. We met in down town Gilbert, which is a place I love. It was fun to spend some time with them.

For some reason this one is just one of my favorites.

Marley was too busy doing her thing to be all that interested in me, so I had to snatch eye contact when I could.

How did Roxxi ever fix her hair like that?! So cute.

With all of Roxxi's creativity, I think that Van is her match as a Handyman. I've seen the projects he's tackled at home on their blog. I'm pretty impressed.

They're a good fit.

Oh, there she goes!

A pause for Marley. She was starting to run out of gas. Time to fill her up.

Their eyes are on their little sweet pea.

Roxxi, such a beauty. Another friend that photography has brought into my life. :-)