The Stories of our life
We hope that everyone had a Merry Christmas this year. We had a great Christmas, very laid back. This was our first time not being with family and we were a little nervous about doing it all. I'll tell you what, it definately made me more grateful to my mom and mother-in-law who cook all the yummy food and let us bring a salad and show up. Brandon had to work until 3 on Christmas eve so the boys "helped" me get dinner ready. After we ate we opened up jammies thanks to grandma Bishop. Logan was hilarious opening up his, you'd of thought he hit the jack pot with the "fire jammies". After he opened them he kept telling me how much he just loved his fire jammies, the next day he didn't want to take them off. Porter was excited about his too, just was out-voiced by his older brother. We watched JOY to the World and talked about Christmas. We put out revel bars for Santa, because daddy said they were his favorite. Logan had drawn a picture of santa and wrote his name and "heart Logan" on it. It's the cutest picture ever. So once the kids to sleep we brought out the gifts, set up the few things that needed to be set up and I put the picture Logan had drawn up in my room on my desk, behind a box and flipped over. The next morning after presents had been opened he went into my room for a few minutes, and then I saw him coming out with his head down, his lip jutted out saying, "oh man, oh man!" So sadly. I saw what was in his hand and he had found that Santa didn't take his picture after all. I asked him what was wrong and he said, "Santa didn't want my picture." (Heart breaking). I told him that Santa actually loved it and must have just left it. I told him that we would mail it to him, and that seemed to make it all better, whew!
Anyways, I know I look awful in this picture but I had to have one. It was freezing cold outside and Brandon didn't want to take another picture. He'd had enough with the one we took before we left. It was such a fun night and a great date night with Brandon before the baby comes.
Last night was my baby shower and I seriously feel so blessed. A friend of mine in my ward, Jenny is due a week after me so it was a double shower for the both of us and it was so much fun to have someone to to share the "spotlight" with, since that's not my favorite position. I always worry about what if no one shows up? But almost everyone came that was invited and it was so nice to be around these amazing women.
We had the shower at an Italian restaurant, ate dinner, chatted, played a game and opened presents. It was so much fun. One of the many reasons I'm so glad to be a member of the church is no matter where I go there are awesome women who are so welcoming and I almost instantly have friends. I would hate to move somewhere and have to rely on just meeting people at random, I would not have many friends. I had a great time.
Here's the loot of goodies that I recieved. Everything was so much fun to open and see. I'm excited to get some pink in our laundry and not have all be blues, greens, and browns. 
Logan and Porter have been waiting FOREVER to build a snowman. Every time it snows I tell them to wait a little while for some more snow. As it turned out it would quit snowing and quickly melt. So last night it snowed all night long and we woke up to a beautiful snow day. Brandon came home after lunch and took the boys outside to build their first SNOWMAN of the year. They had so much fun out there and were quite proud of all of their (or daddy's) hard work.
So we all were dressed up, (yes even Brandon participated, gasp! It was a shocker he did it willingly). We arrived, sang some Christmas hymns and then walked through the over flow which was turned into the path to Bethlehem. We were given bags of coins to buy our food and trinkets, and then entered the city with some overzealous Roman Soldiers, and other towns people. We have an artist in our ward who was drawing portaits of people. Logan found him instantly and waited patiently in line for about 20 minutes and then sat still for about another 15 minutes. He was very intrigued with how this guy was drawing and was very proud of his finished project. Other things they had that we could buy were ornaments, hand made soaps, our name in Hebrew, a Bishop Family Journal to keep our family record in, potted drinking cups, and tons and tons of food. As a spectator it was a lot of fun. But man I would not have wanted to put that together or to clean it up. 
Here's the boys with Logan's Portrait and Brandon's Portrait. There was no hope for Porter in sitting still that long. When Mary and Joseph came walking through the town he decided to throw a conniption and had to be removed from the area. He then took a drink of water from the drinking fountain and dribbled all down the front of him and started freaking out that he ruined his Halloween costume. We left shortly after that.
The other day Logan and I were walking in the store and he turned to me and said, "Mom Christmas isn't all about the decorations!" I was a little taken aback by this and a little proud, so I wanted to see where he was going to go with this and asked him, "that's right, what is Christmas all about?" He got a big old grin and said, "PRESENTS!" Oh how my heart broke, I felt like such a failure. I explained to him it was about the birth of Jesus and the hope that he brought into the world. So last night after the program which he intently listened to I asked him what Christmas was all about and he said, "Not just the activities, but presents too." Sigh! What is a mother suppose to do. Some day he'll learn right?
Here's kind of a picture of my belly, and Porter giving baby sister a kiss. Sorry for those of you who wanted to see what I've been talking about lately, but it's the picture I had on my camera already.
After we got home and got some lunch we took the kids over to the mall to ride the train and to see Santa. The train people weren't the happiest people to be around, but once we finally got on the train the boys had a blast. Aren't they all so cute.
Logan told santa that he wanted a light saber this year, I think that one will be do-able since his cousin got him that for christmas. Yes it's a good thing that he can't read or else I'd be spoiling all of his fun.
I didn't hear what Porter told santa but when I asked him what he had said he told me that he wanted a "hippopotamus". I think daddy has been singing that song a little too much this year. He's starting to influence our kids wants for Christmas.
We went against all the rules and set up our christmas tree last saturday. It was so much fun to be able to have our own big tree this year and to put all of our favorite ornaments on them. The boys got a kick out of looking at their ornaments from the years past. We have a tradition of giving each of the kids their own ornaments every year. They loved seeing what they had when they were babies and stuff.
Here's all the happy boys with the finished product. Logan turned off the light and we all just sat and stared at it and talked about how magical a tree can be. I don't really know what it is, but with the lights turned on some kind of magic seems to happen, I love it.
I couldn't find ornaments that I liked this year or what I really wanted to represent this year for each boy, so I took them to Kmart and let them pick. We found some good ones. Porter wanted this cute little car which I thought represented us living here in Michigan pretty well.
Logan picked a bicycle since this is the year he got his first big boy bike and can ride it, with training wheels all by himself. 
Well I didn't know whether or not if I should post or wait to post (since we're going private tomorrow). I decided to post otherwise I feel like I might overwhelm you all with one ginormous post.
Brandon is thankful for:
Porter was eating chips with his lunch and fell off of his chair, knocking all of the chips to the ground. Since it was just the chips and they weren't smashed I just told him to pick them up and put them on his napkin and throw them away. What started out as chip picking up, turned into picking up every little crumb and dirt off of the floor. Logan and Porter spent a good half hour looking under the couch, in the cushions, under the table legs, basically everwhere and picked up all the crumbs for me. Tell you what I just might never have to sweep again.
We had a preschool field trip while Papa and Grandma were here and we went to the Morley Candy Factory. It was a lot of fun, mostly because we got free chocolate afterwards, yum! 
Man where does the time go?? It seems just like yesterday that we had him. What a little sweet heart and blessing he has been in our life. He turned 5 on friday and had a "great" day. Thursday night I went and bought a happy birthday sign at the grocery store. I brought it home to hang up and noticed that it said, H-Y-P-P-Y * B-I-R-T-H-D-A-Y. So I got Brandon to go to the grocery store and trade it. He looked at the rest of them and they were all spelled wrong and of course made in China. So we had to get a different sign that wasn't as cool or so I thought. Porter woke up first and saw the sign and presents and ran and woke up Logan. Logan's first response was "Wow mom, I like the shiney sign". So it worked out.
We took him out to breakfast to the "Original Pancake House" that he loves. He then had to go to preschool and was able to take a treat to his friends there and thought that was pretty cool. When he got home from school he opened up his presents and thought he was in heaven. He really is an easy kid to please and just ate up everything that was happening. 
He finally got his black hole to complete his planet heroes set and it just made his day.
We went to Red Robin for dinner and they came and sang to him. He got so excited and speechless and didn't know what to do. It was so funny to see him get shy with that much attention. We came home and had cake and ice cream. He wanted a captain america cake and the only captain america things were these tiny little action guys. But as you can tell it didn't matter he thought it was so cool anyways. 
These are the boys trying to show off their cute fire trucks that they made. As you can tell with our pictures lately, it takes a lot of effort to get them to smile at the same time and to look at the camera at the same time. Some day they might get it. 
One of the houses we went to was really decked out in decorations and they had this pirate ship. My boys thought it was the coolest thing. So like the poor kids we are we used it as our back drop and snapped a few pictures. 
By the time we were about half way done my kids were getting a little tired. So if there was a bench or steps they would sit down after ringing the door bell and wait for someone to come to the door. Once someone came to the door Porter would yell, "Yay, they're here! They're here!" Their bags that they carried started to get too heavy that it would throw Porter off balance. He was falling all over people's bushes and the ground. It was a good Halloween, next year we'll know better and go out at the right time.
If you can see in this picture you can tell Porter was in a hurry to get dressed this morning. Yes that is 2 different colors of underwear band lines that you see. He put his clean underwear over his underwear from yesterday. Yep that's my boy!
