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.
