The Nuffer Nest

I LOVE Christmas!! I know many people who love Thanksgiving and I like Thanksgiving (I like any holiday that brings my family together), but I adore Christmas! We have a lot going on in November for our family. It's my birthday one week, Thanksgiving the next week, and our anniversary ends the month the following week. Not to mention the numerous family birthdays in between. Last year we started decorating on my birthday mid month and this year we did the same. Some might say it's a little early, but I don't think so. I love it! I don't really care too much about my birthday's anymore, but this gives me something to look forward too again. November is such a busy month that I'd rather decorate sooner than later anyway, so we can enjoy the ambiance longer. The tree is up and so are all the adornments and lights... I love the lights. Here is the Nuffer family Christmas 2010. This year we decorated Jackson's room with a little tree of his own (till

I've felt very overwhelmed recently by all my many blessings. Daily I give thanks in my heart to Heavenly Father for blessing me with so much! It's not an odd occurrence to find tears in my eyes at 10:13am because I caught a glimpse of Jackson and he's just so beautiful that my heart is brimming over with love and gratitude for that simple moment of really seeing him. So I wanted to list a few things that I am blessed with countlessly on a daily basis. First and foremost, Jim. I wish all women could have such a loving, patient, thoughtful, selfless man in their lives. Every morning Jim wakes up before me and gets up with Jackson so I can get a few more minutes of sleep. During those few moments in the early morning before Jackson is even out of bed he usually cleans any dishes left in the sink, or unloads the dishwasher, or makes Jackson's breakfast, or makes breakfast for me. He does whatever he can to make my day a little simpler than it would have been. He te

This year was a big year for my little lion. He actually understood... kinda, what was going on. He learned how to 'roar' and how to say, "Trick or Treat!". He attended several parties, carved a pumpkin with mommy and daddy, and handed out candy on Halloween night. This was a good year for Jackson. First we started out by carving the 2010 jack-o-lantern. He was afraid of the pumpkin once it was carved, I find this very funny. He's a cowardly lion. Then started our tour of Halloween parties in Lubbock. First, we played games and ate treats at the Library Halloween party, then we made our way to the Silly Carnival at the Science Spectrum, and finally we ended with Trunk or Treat. Jackson really like the Halloween games at the Library. Next year will even be more fun when we have 2 little boys to dress for Halloween. On to Halloween 2011!

This pregnancy has been so different from my last pregnancy, so I just KNEW this baby was a girl. I was 95% sure of it and I told everyone. Yesterday, at my 16 week appointment, we found out that my little girl is actually a BOY!! I was so shocked that I was wrong, but so grateful for a boy. I do not want any baby girls because I do not want any teenage girls. I know how I was as a teenager and I don't want Karma to give me what I deserve. Baby boy Nuffer is measuring a couple weeks ahead of schedule, but Jackson was a really long baby, so I'm not shocked this one is long as well. In a couple weeks we have a visit with the specialist and we'll get some really cool 3D photos. I'm so excited to see what this baby looks like. Will he and Jackson look alike? I hope so! Not just because Jackson is the cutest boy on the planet, but because my dream as a little girl was to have 2 children look just alike except one has light hair and the other has dark hair. Jackson

This was a pretty simple FHE. After prayer we watched the story of the Tower of Babel and Jackson wasn't that interested this time. Then I thought building a tall tower with blocks would teach Jackson about towers. He usually likes playing with his blocks, but not this time. He built a tower twice and both times knocked it down and ran away. Oh well, you win some, you lose some.

I'm a little late in getting this up, but here it is! We learned about Noah's Arc this week. After prayer, we watched the scripture story of Noah's Arc on LDSFriend.org. This is one of Jackson's favorite times. All week long he points to the computer and says, "shope" which means show. He calls the scripture stories his shows or "shopes". So cute! Then I made a generic ark out of construction paper so that Jackson could decorate it with colored and different shaped pasta. We just used Elmer's glue. He had a blast! And the final results:

I was getting ready for church yesterday and I really noticed just how big the baby belly is already. I've noticed that this pregnancy is totally different from when I was pregnant with Jackson, but my goodness! I'm bigger EVERYWHERE this time and with Jackson is was pretty much just belly and even the belly didn't get terribly big. I haven't gained weight, in fact, I'm still in in the negative as far as weight gain. I'm about 4 pounds smaller than when I got pregnant, but try telling that to my body which continues to expand by the minute! This is the Buddha belly as of yesterday (13w 2d). Now, I realize I wasn't a skinny-mini by any means before I got pregnant. I've never seen the small end of the scale and I realize I never will, but WOW! I remember when I was pregnant with Jackson that women would tell me that I would eventually grow out of my maternity clothes. This never happened, but it's already happening this time around. I though

The first trimester of pregnancy is always tough for me with the nausea and the exhaustion, but I'm beginning to slowly recover and that means FHE is back! This week we learned about Enoch and Zion. We watched the scripture story on the computer and then we finger painted!!! I bought a $1 4-pack of vanilla pudding snacks and used icing dye to color the pudding for finger painting. It's cheap and easy, and totally safe if your toddler eats it. We actually tried to get Jackson to eat it, but he wouldn't. Good boy! I wasn't sure if it would stain his hands or his clothes so we stripped him down before we got started creating art. FYI, it doesn't stain. And here's his finished project. Jackson created his own Zion.

A friend of mine uses the motto, "if you decorate, it will come". So I decorated for fall because I want the fall weather to get here already. I'm a pregnant lady who doesn't like the heat when I'm not pregnant, so I'm especially not fond of it right now. It's supposed to be in the low 80's here, but instead it's in the high flippin' 90's! A friend of mine has a fabulous blog, http://smallsimplethingswithlove.blogspot.com, and it is my FAVORITE blog, so check it out. Nicole, is talented and creative and on a budget!! (my 3 favorite things) Anyway, she had some really cute ideas on her blog that I stole and it got me in the mood for decorating! This picture is of our entry way, by our front door. My favorite part is the autumn picture which I made with my handy-dandy Cricut machine. My husband even helped, hehe. I've had the frame for at least 10 years and I just took out the old ugly picture of the flower that was in it and crea

That's right, we were waiting to tell everyone, but today we had our second appointment and the second sono and Baby Nuffer #2 is doing well. Most of you know that we had a miscarriage in June after struggling with infertility, it was a very devastating time for us. We were "advised" to wait a couple cycles before trying again (and we were going to take the advice), but a little voice, I know now it was the Spirit, told me we should try again as soon as possible. I talked to Jim and he agreed and sure enough baby #2 is on it's way again! This little one is very healthy and has a strong heartbeat!! We aren't out of the woods yet, I'm just under 9 weeks and at 12 weeks our chances of miscarriage drop significantly. I don't feel we'll be out of the woods until I have our little baby in my arms, which will only give me a whole new set of stresses to worry about. ;) This is Baby Nuffer #2 at 6 weeks and 5 days. If you look close it's off to the

So no one ever told me that the second year of life goes by much faster than the first. It seemed like we just had Jackson's first birthday party a couple months ago, but nope, it's been a year. August brings the HOTTEST weather of the year and my little man's birthday. Jim and I decided that this year we weren't going to have a big party like last year, just a small little get together with family, but little by little the party got bigger and bigger. I'm glad we threw him a big boy birthday party and think everyone had a good time. Jackson really likes Toy Story, especially Buzz, so we decided to throw a Toy Story party. It worked out great because stores are busting at the seams with Toy Story mania!! So, I realize it looks like Toy Story threw up in our house, but Jackson loved it!! His cake... not too bad. And we had Toy Story 2 playing in another room for everyone who didn't want to go outside and play in the water... or as I like to call them, party