Happy Birthday Autumn!!

Today Autumn turned 2 years old. We were in Virginia visiting the Noons and plan on leaving tomorrow morning. We have had a great time this week.

Taylor and Autumn Christmas 2006

Merry Christmas!

God became man; the divine Son became a Jew; the Almighty appeared on earth as a helpless human baby, unable to do more than lie and stare and wriggle and make noises, needing to be fed and changed and taught to talk like any other child. And there was no illusion or deception in this: the babyhood of the Son of God was a reality. The more you think about it, the more staggering it gets. Nothing in fiction is so fantastic as is this truth of the Incarnation.
J. I. Packer (1926– )

Merry Christmas from the Nielsens!

2006 proved to be a very exciting year for us. It was marked by lots of changes and many reasons to be thankful. 2006 began with us living in Nashville, wondering if we needed to make a change and 2006 ends with us living 1400 miles away in the glorious southwest! Albuquerque is a wonderful place to live, but the extra lotion for dry skin and green chile on everything has taken some getting used to! We are very thankful for this transition and it’s wonderful to ponder how God has blessed us so richly in 2006.

Kim: Kim greatly enjoyed her teaching position in the PA program at Trevecca Nazarene University in Nashville. Her students loved her and she saw much fruit in her position there. In July, she had the privilege of traveling to Moldova for 10 days with our church in Nashville to minister at an orphanage there. It was a challenge for all of us to have Kim be gone for so long, but it was more than worth it for the sake of children who have so many unmet needs. Since moving to Albuquerque, she has enjoyed spending more time at home with the kids and working one day a week at a pediatric clinic.

Taylor: Taylor loves to play with his little sister and has started to work on his letters and reading. He loves to wrestle with me and anyone else who is willing to withstand his fury. He loves to play with his cars, trucks and dinosaurs. Spiderman has also been a big hit for Taylor this year. He has been blessed by meeting lots of new friends from church and also has a knack for memorizing Bible verses. Joshua 1:9 is his favorite verse thus far. He is a blessing to us in many ways and has a very sweet spirit.

Autumn: Autumn is our precious little soul. All she is interested in is whatever her big brother is doing. This has proven to make her very durable and courageous! She is a miniature version of her mommy, which melts her daddy’s heart everyday! She has currently experiencing an explosion of language. Her favorite words are: “wow”, “hold you”, “stinky”, “eat”, “baby”, “mama”, and “dada”. She has also started sitting on the potty! You can stay up to date on the kids by visiting: www.nielsenkids.blogspot.com. I update it regularly with pics and videos of the kids.

Zach: I started the year as a sideman for Matthew West and songwriter for Word Publishing in Nashville. We knew we needed to make a change and God provided the opportunity to work for Desert Springs Church in Albuquerque as a music minister. This job has proved to be nothing but a blessing for us. Though we are far from our families we are thankful for a loving church family that continually provides for our needs and gives us opportunities to serve. I continue to enjoy spending time with Kim and the kids, taking seminary classes, practicing guitar and piano, biking to church and in the mountains of NM, and blogging (www.takeyourvitaminz.blogspot.com - shameless plug… I know).

We hope this letter finds you all well and know that if you are ever in the southwest please give us a call. We would love to see you!

BTW – Baby #3 is on the way. Kim is due on May 24th!

What they are into these days

Taylor is starting to work on his writing skills.


Autumn loves to play with her farm. She can focus on it for a long time. We like it!

Chocolate Pudding Anyone?

Snow in ABQ!!!

We had our most snow of the year today. It was fun, but certainly won't last long.

Bubble Gum Bubbles and First Words

Recently Autumn has experienced a bit of an explosion in terms of her vocabulary. She will be two on Dec 30th and up to this point she has been way behind in her speaking compared to where Taylor was at her age. It's not hard to understand since her big brother loves to speak for her!

Christmas with the Logids - 2006

Playing in the Foothills of ABQ

Grandma and Grandpa Logid are here this weekend and we had a fun morning hiking around in the foothills.

Taylor and His T-Rex

We all knew that Taylor was totally in love with his T-Rex that Nana bought him, but when we came home last night and saw how the babysitter had put them both too bed, we knew that his affection for the T-Rex had grown.

Unexpected Nap Time

This is how Kim found Autumn yesterday. It wasn't nap time. Evidently she was tired from all the playing with her cousins!

Time with the Cousins

Kim recently bravely took the kids on a cross country trek to the icey nation of South Dakota to visit her sister, brother-in-law and their kids. They had a great time and the kids did well on the flights.

Thanksgiving Fun

We had a great time seeing family and friends over the Thanksgiving holiday. We drove up for Denver to see the Weavers and the Eklunds. Both dear friends from college days. We also stopped by to see my Grandma Taylor and Aunt Merry and Uncle Joel Taylor in Co. Springs. Here are some pics:

Halloween Fun!

Our little girl is growing up

We are discovering that Autumn is saying more than we previously thought. It just isn't very clear so you really have to pay attention. The last couple of weeks though she is going through a language explosion and no longer seems afraid to try new words. Here are her latesest... Taylor is "aiya", dog is "gog", stinky and sticky are a couple of favorites but sound the same at "ticky or tinky", "moon", "more", "mine", "cookie" and a bunch more that are getting close to sounding like something.

Autumn took another big step in growing up tonight. After their bath she wanted to "pee pee" on the big potty. I sat her up there for awhile and she actually went! Taylor and I celebrated with her and she was very proud of her big achievement.

The Pumpkin Process

First you have to pick the pumpkin...









Then you have to get the "goop" out...








Then you have to draw on the pumpkin...

This is the face Taylor wanted me to draw on the pumpkin:





Then you have to cut out the face...

The Diaper

Today Taylor successfully changed Autumn's diaper by himself. Now if I could just get him to focus on the poopy ones, I think we'd be in good shape. I'll probably be able to bribe him with some money...

Halloween Masks from Grandma Jolene