Sunday, October 31, 2010

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!


HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

This has been a fun full week of parties and more which I will recap next week after Halloween is over! But for now here are pics of my Halloween cuties! Wizard of Oz if you could not figure it out! I hope to get a pic of Jon as tin man with us later today (:







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Thursday, October 28, 2010

8 Months Old!

Mitchell Ford Nelson
8 Months Old
10.26.2010
18.8 Pounds
Somewhere between 28-30 inches (too wiggly to be sure!)

My baby boy is getting too big, too fast! He is such a joy to be around! No crawling yet but sitting on his own without much help and lots of rocking on his hands and knees still! He has four teeth now and loves to grind them. He also loves to chew on his tongue. It was hard to get a photo of him this time with his "8" because he kept trying to eat it! So here are his latest pics!





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Sunday, October 24, 2010

Happy Birthday Jon!

Jon turned 35 today! Woo hoo! We were able to go out last night and celebrate and then have all of his family over for a birthday celebration this evening! Here he is blowing out his candles and celebrating another happy and healthy year!
Happy Birthday to my wonderful, devoted husband!

Shayla and Jon


Shayla cannot resist a party hat!


While trying to get the picture, Mitchell stuck his hand in the pie!

The Nelsons (only family pic where Jon is not sticking his tongue out!)
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Tuesday, October 19, 2010

The Happiest Place on Earth!

Yesterday, we spent the day at Disneyland with our family, Jon's sister's family and his mom and dad. Despite the few rain showers and crowds, it was fun and we all had a great time! It was Mitchells first time and he was a great sport (on everything but the Pirates ride which Shayla did not want to go on thinking it was too scary)! Shayla is now 40 inches (with her shoes on!) so she can go on everything in the park and loved Big Thunder Mountain and the Matterhorn roller coasters (we were going to do Space Mountain but opted to go to Parade instead as we ran out of time). It was fun to go with the grandparents and I wish we got a group photo but we didn't! We did get lots of photos though and here are a few of my favorites with a slideshow of more to link to at the end!

The Nelsons in front of Fantasyland
Jon & Shayla with cousin Stella and David
Mitchell with dad (Jon had sore shoulders by the end of the day!)
Shayla insisted in waiting in a 20 minute line to hug and touch Pooh Bear.
Even though he took a snack break in the middle of our wait and
was gone for 10 minutes, she thought it was worth the wait)!


More photos of Disneyland and Fall 2010



Sunday, October 10, 2010

Pumpkin Patch Poses!

This week we celebrated the beginning of October with a visit to the pumpkin patch to take some fall pictures of the kids! Shayla loves the pumpkin patches climbing everywhere and loved running around with some of the friends we met up with there! Mitchell enjoyed it too!

Mom, Mitchell and Shayla
Some of Shays closest friends! Cole, Hailey, Brody and Shayla
Brody, Shayla and Hailey (saying "where's my lollipop?")
Shayla perfecting her pose (:
He kept trying to eat the pumpkin - squash is one of his fav foods!
Two cute kids!

Friday, October 8, 2010

Teaching Your Children Values (Guest Post)

A few of you may have heard of Joy School which is a parent run and guided preschool which I would love to do with Shayla but have not found anyone locally to do it with me (any takers?)! Anyway, the founders of Joy School are also Mormon (did you know that?) and they are amazing parents who have been able to instill Christ-like values in thousands of children worldwide! I think they have such an inspired outlook on parenting and I recently started reading their book "Teaching Your Children Values" which has been very insightful so far! My sister, Megan, recently attended a talk when they were in the DC area and she posted some of her notes from their talk on her blog and graciously gave me permission to share them here since I think they are such great parenting tips and I know a lot of my parent friends and relatives read my blog - hopefully this will inspire some of you as well!

This is a "guest post" from my sisters blog - slightly modified -
FROM MY SISTER MEGAN'S BLOG -
Here she is with her adorable family!

Jane and Richard Eyre Fireside 9/5/10

On Sunday, Sept. 5, 2010, I had the opportunity to go to a Parenting Fireside given by Jane and Richard Eyre at the Visitors Center of the Washington D.C. Temple.

Jane and Richard Eyre have nine children, have written many books on Parenting and spearhead the Joy School program. I've been reading their newsletters for almost 3 years now so when I heard they were coming to the D.C. area and speaking at a Fireside I was so exicted! I even made a facebook event page for it. Crazy, huh?


Well, the day came and I went. It turns out the Eyres were in town to visit one of their sons- Eli- who lives near D.C. and were willing to speak to us as long as they were in town. They both spoke together, speaking about what the needs are currently in Parenting. Brother Eyre spoke about how he feels every Parent needs to listen to the Spirit to receive revelation for their children. Sister Eyre spoke about how Parents need to learn about Entitlement. Here are a few of the main points I got from the Fireside:

1. Deal with our children how our Heavenly Father, Our God, deals with us: patience, love, understanding.

2. If you have little children in your home, you have JOY. (How true is that? I love how all my little ones make me laugh and want to just play)

3. Little kids can memorize little scriptures.

4. We should ask them what they learned at Church. We can have a Parent/Teacher Conference with their Sunday School Teachers as you would do with school teachers.

5. Upgrade Family Time Together, Upgrade Scripture Study, Upgrade Family Prayer. We can do everything a little bit better!

6. They said "I promise you will receive the most direct and responsive answers you've ever received if you pray-'Heavenly Father, you sent me this child- how can I help him/her with ________ (such and such)' "

7. Analyze the problem, take it to the Lord and listen for His answer, you should spend 40% of the time you pray listening for a response.

8. As LDS Parents we have Eternal Perspective, Stewardship Prayer, the Model of Supreme Parent and his Plan of Salvation, a back-up system- the Church and Jesus Christ.

Good luck in all your Parenting endeavors!