I'm Baaaaaack...

I'm not dead. 

At least I don't think I am ;) Still kicking around in this part of the country. Recovering from the past few months of utter craziness. Enjoying the beautiful spring weather. 🌸 🌼 Living life to the fullest (as much as possible anyway ;)

What have I been doing, you might ask? Short story - LIFE. The long story...well, it's a really long story. Haha, I'll attempt to do a really quick (who am I kidding...this is probably gonna get kinda lengthy) several-months-wrap up post cause goodness it's been awhile since I've done that. But before I do, let me give you a sneak peak from the photo-shoot I had with Sweet Pea. Because it's random and also cause she's just utter adorableness. (Those of you from Facebook have probably already seen the rest of the photos ;)) 

*happy sigh* Her eyes.... 😍

Ok...where should I start? Guess it wouldn't hurt to just dive in somewhere. It's kinda messy...hopefully I don't leave you all in a confused jumble of events. 

Teaching Online 

So some of you might remember the online school I'm teaching at right now. It's been going really well and I've made some great connections through there! And the head of the school is one of the sweetest people on earth 💜  Our Facebook group has grown immensely. In the past 4 months since it was started, it has reached over 500 people! We're all so awed at how God has worked in this and we're really hoping to be able to make an impact on the homeschooling world. Of course, things are never absolutely perfect, so prayers for guidance would be very much appreciated! Added busyness as courses for next year are already in the works, and online summer camps are approaching, which is gonna be super exciting! It's so amazing to see all the different talents people are bringing to teach. And the fact that some of these teachers are kids themselves just makes it even more awesome! :D 

School and Exams and all that fun stuff but more importantly the exams ;) And I'm finally done piano!!!!!!!! 

Ya know that saying "The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak"? Well...that kinda applies to this situation. My mind was willing to do all sorts of stuff...but well yeah. Turns out in reality, you sometimes can't do everything. I um, well, I have a hard time saying 'no'. I also daydream too much about things I should be able to do. Combine those two and you rapidly get an overload of things. Now also combine that with bad time management skills and you get...*shudders* Utter disaster. Last semester seemed to be going fairly well, things flowed in a timely manner and I thought I had finally mastered time management. Yep. Nope. I didn't. Second semester rolled around and with it a ton of hectic-ness. Online school closed down and we had to go looking for new courses. Which meant I ended up adding more to my course load than what we had originally planned. And then the teaching position came up. And work at Tim's was still going too. At the beginning, it didn't seem too bad. Chemistry, ASL, Baking, World Pastries, Writing a Research Paper, Piano, Biochemistry... it was busy, but not TOO bad. But then exams struck. Dun dun DUNNNN. And ohhhh myyyyyyyyyy was that awful. In March there was the exam for Grade 12 Biochemistry. Thousands of notes. Sitting in one place for hours at a time. Bucketfuls of tears. And then right after that exam was over, my attention was then moved to my driving exam. I'm an awful driver btw. Never really been that confident to begin with, so yeah. Lot of driving lessons that sometimes ended in feeling utterly hopeless in the situation. Finally took the exam - and failed again *sigh*😑  So yep, still have a driver's exam on my to-do list. But right after the driver's exam, my focus then turned to the piano exam looming ahead. That was during end of March and beginning of April. It was dreadful. Consequences of not consistently practicing was extremely long amounts of time on the piano. And by long I mean looonnnngggg. 

Would ya look at all that piano... xD 

Anyway...lesson learned. Try to avoid overloading on school. And procrastination is not a good thing. But then we already knew that, didn't we? ;) The actual piano exam went fairly well - for the first time ever, I had my exam in the nursery room of the church. Which meant I had a huge tiger grinning at me the entire time. It was interesting. But when I finally stepped out of that building I wanted to run around and dance and jump up and down. Cause it was finally all done!! And I don't mean just the exams. I mean I. am. finally. done. pianoooooooooo!!!!!!! *throws confetti* *squeals* *hugs self excitedly* Seriously, days after the exam, I would still squeal with joy at random parts of the day because of how excited I was. Ask my sister. Or my friends xD 

And then of course there was just life in general that keeps a person so crazy busy ...
See, when you have exams going, school for some reason doesn't just stop until after it's over. Nope, it keeps going. So does life. There were a couple times in the past few months where I seriously thought I was gonna drown with all the stuff I had to do. The only thing that kept me going was my family and friends. Without them and their prayers, who knows where I'd be right now!

Of course there was also the funny parts of life for which I'm so thankful for :D

Me: Toblerone, can I have a hug?
Toblerone: Sure
*gives me a hug*
Toblerone: Can I choke you?

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Maple: *bark*
Toblerone: Woof!
Maple: *bark*
Toblerone: Woof!
Maple: *bark*
Toblerone: Woof! Woof! Woof!

Me: 😑 😂

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

#eightyearoldwisdom

Did a ton of baking...

Did not do a lot of reading :/ 
The only books I think I read in the past few months was The Reluctant Godfather (Allison Tebo), Courageous Love (Susan K. Marlow), Destroy (Tricia Mingerink) and Rosemary Cottage (Colleen Coble). 4 books in *counts* 3 months 😮 Wow, that's awful. Guess I know what I'll be doing in the summer ;)

Listened to lots of music
I have created Youtube playlists. They are sooooo helpful and way less distracting too. And I discovered a new artist. Francesca Battistelli! (Tiger Lily says her name sounds like a brand of pasta...but her music is amaaazzzing) These songs were great stress-relievers for some reason while I was studying for all my exams. And I even ended up choreographing a country dance to the song Run to Jesus. It's so much fun and spinning and tapping really brings the stress levels down xD

Run to Jesus

Lions

Strangely Dim

He Knows My Name

We are the Kingdom

More Than You Think I Am 

                                         

I am Yours 

Oh yeah, and I may or may not have turned 17 

My birthday fell on the same day our Awana lesson did, and my dear friends planned a little surprise party for me. It was so very special and ahhhh....love them all so much! 💖

Talking about friends
We had several get togethers with family friends of ours. Well some of them weren't really get togethers...but it kinda counts. Ski trips, people. So. much. fun! Liv came with us on one of our ski trips and she musta brought a good report back to her family cause they all ended up coming with us the next time. Friends just make things so much awesomer for some reason...I wonder why?

Another time we got to get together with one family we hadn't seen in almost a whole year! So it was lovely getting to see them at one of the girls' adult ceremony. (Turning 13, woo hoo! 😃) There were some great games we got to play, and we got to catch up on stuff with each other. Also Odelia may or may not have hinted I should get back to blogging... so you have her to thank for that😉

Then just this past week, we had our friends over for the day. We kinda made it into a half surprise party/half family get-together. The planning that went into it was so much fun. And slightly nerve-racking. DO you know how hard it is to keep a secret amongst two big families who combined, make about 20 people?? It's hard, I tell ya! But we managed to make it work and Victoria didn't suspect a thing until we threw balloons in her face and nearly blasted her ears out with party blowers 😊 The rest of the day consisted of making pizza, walking in the forest, and JAMMING!! 🎶 🎸 Seriously, it is SO much fun jamming with the Nickersons. I think we're all just connected with our love for music :) For once, we actually practiced a song instead of jumping from one song to another to another and we focused on fine-tuning. We're so close to done, and the recordings on the phone are ahhhhh! So good! And it's funny and so cool seeing how far we've come. Before it used to be just piano and vocals, and now it's grown to include whistle, fiddle, guitar, and drums...I'm still trying to wrap my head around it :D

(just as a side note, I'm having waaaayyy too much fun with the new emoticon box in Blogger. As I'm sure my post is probably showing :P)

Oh yeah and we've discovered the power of FaceTime xD Bad hair days galore, I tell ya ;) But it's so much fun and kinda makes up for not getting to see each other in person every single day 😊

Aaaannnndddd I'm thinking I should probably end this post now
If you've all managed to reach the bottom...I'm impressed ;) Thanks for reading through all that! But to let you all know - I've missed you all sooooooo much! *hugs* So glad I'm gonna be able to get back into blogging, though I probably won't be able to post as much as I'd like. I'll try to not disappear for two months though *guilty grin* :D

Hope you all have a lovely Easter weekend! Christ has Risen!