She’s endearing, intelligent, driven, and fascinating! She has an outstanding sense of humor about life and the funny things that can happen from day-to-day as well as over a lifetime. Niccole and Luke, her husband, have five children. Four are girls, of which two of the children are twins, and one is a boy. When it comes to understanding children, she has a house full of children to garner stories from. Not only that, but she raised her five siblings when they were growing up, and she did it from around the age of 14. She has always been the backbone and strength of keeping the family together, running the household, and keeping herself on track to boot. One can’t help but be amazed by her!

She always has a positive spin on everything. Her books started as a whim. She wrote this cute story, “Juniper Jade and the Dreadful Dare”, and when Mike was wandering around the market, he found Niccole’s booth. She shared her latest book with my husband, and he bought it. That is the last thing I expected him to walk back to my booth with. In his hand, he had a Trump shirt, Trump hat, and “Juniper Jade & The Dreadful Dare.” I am looking at him, and I am like, “What is up with you?” It was bizarre, my husband just walked up with political items and a children’s book. It was pretty cool because I found my next subject for The Idaho Gazette.

What blows me away is how many parallels we have in our life. Her mom bailed out on her, and her dad was pretty much her fixture in life, but got sick and passed. We won’t go into the reasons why her mom faded out of her life. It’s irrelevant at this point. She has succeeded, and at the end of the day, that’s all that matters.

She has found more success selling in person than selling online. We have both tried Etsy and other websites that tout selling, and they were a fail. It is so much better to sell at the Farmer’s Market. She can sell to the child and the adult. Her stories, while simplified for children’s purposes, are easily read by adults as well. My husband bought one!

She home schools her children, which is amazing to me! I would never have that kind of patience. I have one child, and she has five! I don’t know how she does it. Her fun sense of humor never quits! For date night, she and her best friend took paper cutouts on a date night. How funny is that? I have done some really strange things in my life, but that is funny!

She is amazing to me because she had, much like I did, a lonely life. She was left in charge of her siblings from about the age of eight, and it never really stopped. Her dad got sick, and she had to take everything and everyone under her wing. It’s difficult when you have to live that way. I didn’t have siblings. I had two older brothers that were pretty much non-existent from the time that I was nine on. I was left on my own to figure things out. Niccole, on the other hand, had to try to make sure they had food and could keep warm.

Her children are endearing and warm. All of her kids are wonderful. Her homeschooling methods are amazing! She let’s her kids have free reign once they are finished with their lessons. They dissected a worm last week, and one of the kids almost passed out, but their son thought it was awesome! I am sure, if she’s anything like me, she’s got one eye on the window watching her children.

They focus on the three R’s, Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic. They allow their children to pick and choose where they want to focus on science and they are doing labs. She is teaching children from ages twelve to four, so chances are they are advanced beyond most school levels at your typical elementary school, junior high, and high school. She is teaching them life.

She had her first daughter, a girl, and then twin girls twenty-three months apart! She didn’t know how she was going to do it. She must have felt overwhelmed. But, Niccole handled it like a champ! She has an amazing family. She thought it was going to be like Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women”.

Luke and Niccole started dating when she was 19. They firmly believe that if you put the time in with your children, whether private schooled, public schooled, it shows. I looked at the cost of public education as opposed to homeschooling. Public schooling comes out at a $10,000 bill, and homeschooling comes in around $3,000. But, you have to have infinite patience to homeschool your children. They are an adorable couple.

With homeschooling, they have more options about the hours that they choose to teach their children. Luke works nights, and that’s the way it is going to be, but Niccole found that when she worked at a preschool, the children that thrive are the ones who see their parents on a day-to-day basis. Because she had to raise herself and her siblings, she didn’t want that for her children. She wanted stability, normalcy, a comfortable surrounding.

She wants to connect with children in a meaningful way, on a level that they can understand. She wants her children to stay close and not meander apart like so many siblings do. She wants them to have each other to hold onto and get strength from, so they don’t feel alone. I can understand that because beyond my husband and daughter, I really have no one. Feeling alone is the worst feeling in the world. She is doing a great job with her kids, and it shows in the children’s stories she writes.

I could go on forever, but I don’t need to tell you that Niccole is a wonderful writer, and her “Joy Book Series” is a lot of fun! She reminds me of “Encyclopedia Brown” by Donald J Sobol. I absolutely love the Desert Horned Lizard in the picture, when I lived in New Mexico we called these Horny Toads!