A visit to "Noah's Ark"

Last week we were able to go visit the Noah's Ark Exhibit at the Skirball Center in Los Angeles. Shayla loved it and has been asking to go back every day for the past week (although we got tickets about 2 months in advance for the free Thursday so no rushing back anytime soon). Anyway, I hope to go again before it closes since it only took us 40 minutes to get there and I thought it was farther in more downtown LA so I was excited about that! They have so many cool animals, fun activities (animal dancing, ark collages, etc), and it was not crowded at all! If you live nearby you should definitely go and if you don't, come visit us and we can go together!

Part of the Ark

Shay riding a camel

Shayla loved this activity the best -
matching the animals two by two and turning a wheel so they would ride up into the ark

Mitchell with a skunk and Nolan opening the skylight

Yes, they are "scooping poop"! Hey that is what someone had to do on the ark (do you think they made the kids do it? they enjoy it!)Shayla has really been into scowling in photos recently! I am sure I will have more scowls pics in the weeks to come!

Mitchell had fun too!

Last Week Catch Up!

Last week was a full fun week for all of us (still recovering)!

MONDAY
After a weekend of celebrating Jon's birthday, I went down to Long Beach on Monday to attend the CA Womens Conference. I have been going to it every year for the past 5 years and love going for fun and inspiration! This year because I could not leave Baby M too long (my brother watched him and Shayla and his 3 kids all by himself!) we opted to attend the short evening program with my fellow gals who have also been with me over the years - my sister in law Christine, my college buddy Jenn, and my long time pal from 3rd grade, Michelle! It is fun to listen to catch up with the gals, listen to inspiring speakers, and browse the fun booths! This year we heard many great speakers from Paula Dean to the McCain ladies to Maria Shriver to Jessica Simpson. It went by way too fast and I look forward to going to the long program again next year!

Me with Christine and Jenn and crazy ladies (:

Inspiration - Me with Jenn and Michelle

TUESDAY
We had an awesome moms group Halloween party with tons of kids in costume, cookie decorating, food, fun, etc. We love our group of friends and look forward to our special holiday get togethers each year!

The kids!

Shayla and Emily (Madeline and Lion)

FRIDAY
Halloween Bunco! I play bunco with a group of fun ladies once a month. This month I co-hosted with Sherilene and we had fun planning our Halloween menu and decorations! I did not however have fun afterwards where a gallon of my leftover black bean soup spilled all over my car! argh!

The co-hosts with our spread!

Some of the ladies in costume!

SATURDAY
Shayla hosted her first fun little Halloween party for our neighborhood kids. She had so much fun planning with me from tying up goodie bags to cutting up tissue paper for our candle craft! I wanted it to be for her and by her and it was fun to see how much she could participate! We had fun decorating pumpkins with parts, pinning the tail on the kitty cat, egg eyeball walk, freeze dancing, etc.

Mr Potato Head Scary Pumpkin

Kids doing the egg walk (Shayla was too hot in her costume after running around)

CHURCH FESTIVAL
Saturday night was the church Fall Festival so we went and had fun at the booths and then did some trunk or treating in the parking lot. She loved the cake walk and donuts on a string the most! Nana and Papa came with us and we had lots of fun!

Shayla at a booth - Bait and switch

Nana and Mitchell

SUNDAY
Shayla wanted to pass out candy with Jon on Halloween and loved doing it and was so careful to give each person one piece each (: Here is the only photo I have with Jon is his "costume" - the tin hat on his head for the tin man - sad I know but lucky I even got that on for a pic!
So that was our week in summary and photos! It was fun and tiring and I am done cooking for a few days! I am not ready to start planning for Christmas yet but it will be here before we know it!

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 (:

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!

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!)

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

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!

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!

Happy Healthy Shay Shay!

My adorable goof ball is healthy as can be! As mentioned in a previous blog post, she was diagnosed with a heart murmur at her 3 year old check up. The dr was slightly concerned as it seemed pretty loud, but after a full heart work up by the cardiologist it was determined that she only has a normal childhood murmur (depends on type, location, sound, etc)! Just wanted to share that - yay - and this cute pic of my big girl!

7 Months Old!

Mitchell Ford Nelson
7 Months Old
9.26.2010
19.5 Pounds

Mitchell is such a happy, busy little boy! He is not crawling yet but can push himself everywhere by rolling and scooting backwards (see photo #2). As seen in the last photo he was doing this most of the time I was trying to get a photo of him - he just wanted to flip over and scoot away! So I have to keep my eyes open. He definitely does not like to be in one place for too long and prefers to be out and about looking at new things or going for stroller walks instead of home. He is very loud (see previous video) and "talks" all the time. He has started to get a bit of separation anxiety and often when I walk out of the room and leave him with other people he will start to cry, but that is pretty normal for his age although I think it is cute he is mommy's boy!
He is a healthy, happy, chunk of a little boy who we love so dearly!!!