North Iowa Therapy Associates

Look at me posting two weeks in a row!! LOL!!!

So I finally took some pictures of my new office last night before I left. Some of them don't look great because of the lighting but here they are anyway.

These first pictures are from the lobby.

We are going to put some old pictures of Mason City up on this wall above the row of chairs.

This is the reception area where we have no receptionist because we are too poor!!! LOL!! These past couple weeks I have come to realize how much I depended on her!!!
This is the hall next to the reception area. My office is the first door on the left and Sue's office is the second door on the left.

This is my office. It has the same colors that were there when we first moved in. I think they work well for right now. THey are nice and bright for working with kids. I am not totally sure about the layout of the furniture right now. I thought I would live in the space for awhile and see how it feels. Then I can move it around to what feels right.

So that is it! I still have to get a file cabnant and then I can get rid of the rest of the boxes on the floor! That will be nice! They are supposed to be delivering those today. We still have some bugs to figure out but for the most part it is going well now!

I will post later pics of Laney's bday!!!!

IIII'MMMMM BAAAAAACK!!!

What a wild couple months! But finally as of last week I am a new small buisness owner! I opened my private practice, sharing a space with my friend Sue. I think we have spent the last month painting!! I didn't think we would ever get done with that. Then just when we thought things were great they put in the wrong carpet! LOL!!! Oh the drama! I keep forgetting to take pics but I promise that I will get that done next week. Then you can see the huge difference in how it looks. Sue is the decorator and I am the money police! LOL!

The girls are doing great! Delaney turns 5 tomorrow!!!! Can you believe it?!! That seems so old to me. She had kindergarten round up last week and loved it. We have been going to preschool in another town so she really does not know that many kids in her kindergarten class. There are only 21 kids so they are spliting them into two classes! Great for the kids not so much for the school. One of the helpers said that Laney is the quietest child! I just replied "I know and that is OK!"

We went to my mom's for Easter. That is our family tradition. It is definately my grandma's holiday. She is awesome! She is 99 and still lives on her own. She is the nicest grandma ever! We will keep going to Easter down there as long as she is around! Here is a pic of the girls with her a couple weeks ago.

this is the closest thing that we have to a recent family photo but I look like crap and the lighting sucks!!!

It had been a long time since I had taken any pics of the girls either, so I made them do a photo shoot the other day. It was finally a little nice out! Here are a couple.

Laney had her spring program at her preschool. They were so cute. The only problem is that we had to sit in those tiny chairs. And mom's with big butts don't fit that well in tiny chairs!!! LOL!!

We also had Laney's conference. It was really great!!!! The teacher told us that she is academically doing very well and her shyness is soooo much better! YAY! But we always new she was "advanced", right grandpa Gene?!

These are some pics from the program.

Ok I think that is all for now. I will post my new lo's and pics of the kitchen and the new office in my next post.

Have a happy spring day!!!!

Sam and my office

So first I wanted to post about our dog Sam. Many of you already know but Sam died over Christmas this year. He was very old and was starting to have a hard time walking but was a very sweet old dog. She came with our house when we bought it 8 years ago. The last owner tried to to have her move into town with them and she just couldn't handle that many people and cars all over. So she brought her back out to us. Sam always let us know when people were here. She was the best guard dog but never hurt anything. Well except the occasional racoon. She taught our other two dogs how to hunt and showed them around.

We will miss Sammy very much!

SO I also had some pics of my office that I wanted to post. This is my office at Francis Lauer where I do all my play therapy and work with kids, teens and families.
This is my super comfy recliner that I bought at a garage sale. Then my bookcases that have my books, the kids books, all my games and art supplies.

This is all of my puppets that I keep on a shoe rack so that the kids can see them and pick what they want.

This is my dollhouse that gets played with a TON! It is from like the 80's! LOL!!! My fabrics are also in this corner. So are my legos and blocks and feelings poster that I have many uses for.

These are my shelves of sandtray minitures. They are addicting I tell ya!!! I am looking for them all the time. I love finding perfect new ones. I think that the trees on the bottom shelf and the pretty things on the top left. This is my couch and on the bottom left you can see my two sand trays. One is plain sand and the clear one is red moon sand. On the other side of the couch is my treasure box that my friend Amy made me a long time ago. Kids get to pick a little toy from there at the end of the session if they followed all the rules.Last is my desk. It is usually not this messy. It was just a crazy day that day and I did not keep up with everything. Plus I needed to take out my garbage! GEEZ!!!

So that is my office. I will miss being there.It has been a really good space to me!

Ok that is all for now! Later everyone!

I think life might be slowing down FINALLY

I think Feburary is going to bring us all to a slower pace! We have been so busy the last two months that I have just been trying to keep up with life in general!

I thought I would pop on quickly and post pitures from Brynn's bday on the 18th and from the trip Tim and I took to Cabo San Lucas Mexico.

First...SHE IS 3!!!!!!!!

Brynn turned 3 on the 18th and was so excited!!! She had a very Brynn birthday! Her cakes were a dinosour (thanks Christin!) and Bolt and her decorations were pirate themed. This was the cake that brynn and I made and Brynn decorated. It was very fun!! Brynn LOVES sprinkles! LOL!!

Then on that Sunday we opened presents in the morning then had cake for breakfast (notice the cake smeared on her face) then had a party with family in the afternoon. It was super big fun and Brynn got a BIG present!!!

Her first big girl BIKE!!!! I know the pic kind of sucks but it shows how excited she was!!!! She got lots of fun presents including a highchair for her baby, a soccer ball, new horses and a stable, more fam stuff and barn animals, a princess crown, hat and lots of other fun stuff!!!

I did a poor job of taking pictures and especially getting pics of the girls with family. I don't play hostess and photgrapher at the same time very well.

Just a couple days after Brynn's bday Tim and I left for Cabo. We got to go through his work so it was the best kind of trip, a free one!!!! The girls stayed with my mom for 3 days and then Tim's parents for 3 days. We had a GREAT time!!!!

this is a picture of the view off the deck in our room.

this is us at the Arch after we went snorkling. We also saw a couple whales while we were on this boat ride.

this was our favorite waiter. Our hotel was all enclusive and he was always entertaining us!! The last night he just kept bringing us random drink after random drink. The people there were SOOO nice. I can not believe how well we were treated whether we were on hotle property or off on our random adventures. I think that we only sat on the beach for one afternoon. Otherwise we kept busy the whole time.

One of the days we were able to go on a zipline tour in the Baja desert. It was so cool!!!! We went on 10 different ziplines across from moutain to mountain. It was such an adrinaline rush!!! We were hundres of feet in the air. Net we went across a suspended bridge. One of the guys that was with us was a bit insane and made it almost impossible to walk across! THen we repelled down a 180 ft cliff. THat was a little harder. The tour guy had to pretty much push me off the edge. It was a blast!!!

We also got a little shopping in. I am totally obsessed with the day of the dead stuff!! I bought lots of things having to do with that. We also took lots of walks on the beach and played a little tennis and bocce ball. Tim kicked my butt.

So that is our update. We are still working hard at redoing our kitchen and we have our cupboard doors ordered. we are taking everything out of them this weekend. Big job!!!

Ialso have big news of my own that I can finally make public. I have resigned my job at Francis Lauer Youth Services and I am going to be going itno private practice!!!!! I am not sure when it will be all done but I am hopeing to be in my own place by the middle of March. I put in my resignation on Thursday. So look forward to some more details later on!!!!!

Wow I can't believe that it has been since Thanksgiving since I have posted! It was just a busy month but I am sure I didn't need to tell you that!

So it is getting late tonight but I wanted to pop in and say that I am still alive and post a couple of pics of our Christmas!

Happy Thanksgiving!!!!!

Before we starting the cooking, parade watching and gorging on great food I wanted to post a very Happy Thanksgiving to all of my wonderful friends and family!!!! I am so thankful for all of you! We are so lucky to have everything we have in our life! Thank you all for your love and support!!!! We all love you!!!

OK enough cheesiness!!!!!

We also have new visitors here at our house. Our friends are gone for a month on a trip and we are watching their guinea pigs for them!!!!!! The girls are LOVING them!!!!!!!!! They didn't really have names when they came so we call them Elle and Chip. Ella has the bed head and chip is the striped one. Here are a couple pics of them!

Have a happy Turkey day!!!!

It has been a while!!! I hope everyone is having a wonderful week and excited about the up coming holiday! I think I am more excited about the weekend after Thanksgiving! I get to go on a shopping trip with my mom, sister and sister in law Kathy to IKEA in MN. I am sure we will have to stop a couple other places as well!!!! Plus we are going to help my mom get all the christmas presents bought for the greatgrand kids. I love buying kids presents!!!!

So I have big news!!!! I finally got my letter stating my application for my RPT (Registered Play Therapist) has been approved!!!!!! YAY!!!!! I am soooooo excited! I have been stalking the mailman for this letter for the past couple weeks! I was a little worried that they would say my grad school classes would not meet their criteria. YAY YAY!!!! What a relief!!!!I think that the next closest RPT is Cedar Falls which is an hour and a half away! Here is the website if you want to go check out what play therapy is!! I will try to post a link on the side of the blog later.

http://www.a4pt.org/ps.index.cfm

Here are a couple of my latest lo's. The first two are made with my November Kraft Girls Kit. There is a link to that site on the side.

I also finished the pages for my December Daily Album inpired by Ali Edwards. Here is a link to her posts about it. http://aliedwards.typepad.com/_a_/december-daily-album-2008.html

I think I will wait to post it until the end of Dec when all the pics are in it! Maybe later I will take a pic of the whole thing as a little sneak peek!

I hope everyone has a super duper fabulous Thanksgiving!!!!!!!!