Thanksgiving!

We went home to see visit my family (Michele's) for thanksgiving this year. It took us 4 hours to actually pack up and get out of our house as opposed to the 30 minutes that it used to take us. It probably would have taken us another 4 hours if we had to pack all our baby stuff...but thankfully my parents were given a ton of baby stuff - so it truly saved us a hassle! Over our stay, my parents babysat for us for the first time - it was nice to be away from Lorens for a couple hours...but also very sad! My sister and Josh and I went to see Twilight. I kid you not, we were the oldest people in the theater. It was a sold out show of solid 11-14 year old girls. When Edward (the "hot" vampire) appeared in the movie, the theater erupted in girly screams and clapping. When Edward and Bella kissed, everyone giggled and whispered and screamed. It cracked me up...especially when Josh tried to join them. :)

This Thanksgiving I was so thankful for my new little love, as well as my husband who takes such good care of both of us. Also so thankful for my mom.

Here are a couple pictures from our thanksgiving week.

family pic

Lorens' first steps...sort of...don't you love that frown?


yawn!!!!!!

~mb

Here are a couple of pictures from Lorens's first few weeks. Things are going great and we're in love!







Here's a link to see the professional newborn pics we had taken.
I'll post more soon...

Lorens Hansen Bishop

On October 24, at 9:54am, Lorens Hansen Bishop was born! He arrived by C-section, weighed 6lbs 14oz, and was 19 inches long. Michele and Lorens are both doing well!

His name (pronounced LOR-ence) is a Scandinavian version of the name Lawrence. He's named after St. Lorenzo/Lawrence. Here's the Wikipedia version of it:

"After the death of Pope Sixtus, the prefect of Rome demanded that Lawrence turn over the riches of the Church...Lawrence asked for three days to gather together the wealth. Lawrence worked swiftly to distribute as much Church property to the poor as possible, so as to prevent its being seized by the prefect. On the third day, at the head of a small delegation, he presented himself to the prefect, and when ordered to give up the treasures of the Church, he presented the poor, the crippled, the blind and the suffering, and said that these were the true treasures of the Church. One account records him declaring to the prefect, "The Church is truly rich, far richer than your emperor." This act of defiance led directly to his martyrdom."

His middle name, Hansen, is his Bestamor's (Danish great-grandmother) maiden name.
If you'd like to see pictures of his first week, go to www.lorenshansenbishop.shutterfly.com.

Here's one of all of us before we left the hospital.

It's almost time!

Here is 36 weeks plus a preview of the nursery!
Any day now...





Check out some baby bump pictures our amazing photographer friend took for us: baby bump pictures

I waddle...

now. When did this start to happen I wonder? It must be a gradual thing because I don't remember not waddling one day and waddling the next. :) Waddle is a weird word.
Josh and I have been so busy getting ready for the baby. I've had four amazing showers...we feel like we pretty much have everything we need for him to come! A list that has gone down from like 100 things to two. phew! We've done most of the work on the nursery...its painted, and we have the crib, dresser, bookshelf and curtains done. We're waiting for our glider to arrive and then we will do the final decorating. I'm going to wait to post pictures of it for when its finished. (the suspense Chaeli, I know...)
This past weekend I started to get stressed out about all the little things we still have to do to get ready, so Josh and I made a "baby to do list" and have started working on it. babies are a lot of work and he's not even here yet. :)
maybe this is where my stress stemmed from...last week I went to an early childhood conference in Dearborn for work and among many things learned that if you give your child 1500 hours of laptime before they go to Kindergarten you'll be sure to set them up for success in school! He's technically sitting on my lap right now...does that count? haha. :)

Since I (we I should say) last blogged...

Baby and I turned 28 weeks...

Baby and I I turned 32 weeks...

34 week pic to come...

We bought a car!...

We sold a car... (i miss it, it was a good car)

showers: (no pictures though)
I had a beautiful outside shower thrown by my GR friends and mom-in-law...what a beautiful day...and so many friends came!

I had an amazing shower thrown by my mom back at home...a fabulous brunch, FIVE games (i loved it), family, and many old and new friends. Including my new best friend who guessed that I had only gained 5 lbs so far during one of the games...love that lady whoever she is... :)

A very sweet (literally...lots of desserts :) shower thrown by my co-workers

And a fun shower thrown by my high school girls and Wendy

baby is on his way...we're so excited! We're taking some baby belly pictures this weekend...hopefully our next post won't take us so long to do...

mb

Josh's first post - the metamorphosis

Faux hawk plus beard plus braces

Faux hawk minus 1/2 beard plus braces

Faux hawk minus beard plus braces

Faux hawk minus beard minus braces

new haircut minus beard minus braces

and finally, an actually good picture taken by my new friend Daley Hake

the end.
-jb

Wow!

25 wks...It doesn't seem like I've been pregnant that long...but then again it does. The baby and I are doing great. We had another ultrasound this past week and were told baby is in the 41st percentile and is growing perfectly. :)

Last weekend Josh and I celebrated our 5 year anniversary. We went to Ludington for the weekend and had such a great time together. Although it was a little too chilly to sit on the beach we still drove to the state park to walk on the dunes, ate our weight in ice cream, went shopping, saw a movie, etc. Here's a couple pictures from our get-a-way.

me and baby at 24wks

Josh, Baby and I conquering the chilly beach


pretty sunset!

Earlier in the month I also celebrated my birthday - Josh had flowers sent to work and took me to Boatworks in Holland for dinner and we had some aaaaamazing food. Then we walked to the lighthouse, which I've never actually been to, and watched the sunset.

Over the past couple weeks we finished painting the nursery, putting the crib together, and registering for the baby items we need...it was sort of a surreal experience for both of us. I just want to give a disclaimer that Babys r us is a crazy store...especially for 2 people that "babys r not us yet"...it was an interesting experience to go around and figure out what we "needed." The only thing that saved us from throwing our registry gun at the foreign registry lady at the end was the fact that I had walked around with two wonderful moms a couple days before who kind of explained everything to me that I would need and which brands they liked best...we thank you, and probably so does the registry lady!!!! :)

Here are the links to our registries:

http://www.babiesrus.com/ControllerServlet?registryNumber=75259153&target=search

http://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/baby/1NKAUEZGH5SHI

https://www.target.com/registry/baby/014399700052705

~mb

20 Weeks

A lot has happened in 4 weeks for us! We went to Florida with the Bishop family at the end of May and had a great vacation with them...our last before our little baby comes! It was so relaxing - nothing but laying out by the pool and beach in the beautiful weather. Then we went home a couple weekends in a row to see my sister, Kirsten, graduate from highschool and have a great party. After that came our 20 wk ultrasound! We were really excited/nervous to find out the gender and to know if our little peanut was healthy...HE is! It's a boy, and we are so happy. We haven't been able to stop talking about what our little boy is going to be like for the past couple days. And now it's names, names, names. We decided to wait to start talking about names until we found out the gender. It's a hard job but someone has got to do it. How do you pick out the perfect name? Welp, you'll have to wait 4 more months to find out as we're keeping whatever we decide a secret. Actually, we're not going to "name" him until he's born so we can make sure he fits whatever we pick out. What if we pick Newt, and he is not a Newt? My point exactly. Josh and I went out last night to baby's r us, our first trip, and each picked out a little boys outfit. I picked a cute little organic blue and yellow polka dot outfit minus anything with cars, baseballs, trucks, tractors, etc. (blech) and Josh picked a little onsie set that has a pirate theme to it...one says "argh" with a little pirate hat on it, one says "i'm a pirate" etc....if you know Josh, you'd know that he was unbelievably excited to buy it... So, there's our 4 week recap! Enjoy the pictures!

me and josh in Fl on a dolphin cruise

me and baby @ 17 weeks

Kirsten's Graduation Ceremony

me and baby @ 20 weeks

baby's tootsie (that's for you, mom!)

baby bishop sucking his thumb

~mb

16 weeks

For anyone who's wondering what I now look like, here is me and baby at 16 weeks.



This weekend Josh finished remodeling our bedroom - woohoo! Now we can start cleaning out all our stuff from the "nursery" since we have more storage space in our room now. We also decided to try our hand at some garage saleing. Heritage Hill had a community wide yard sale, so Josh strapped a milk crate to his bike (yes, he looked ridiculous...shhh) and we rode down there to check things out. So glad we did, because we found some great deals! We spent $40 total and bought a baby bathtub, a baby bouncer seat, a BabyBjorn active baby carrier (the best deal by far), 14 little yellow and green outfits, 8 onsies, and a little hat. I think I'm going to be sick once we start shopping for full price baby gear and clothes.

Highlight of this week is that I started to feel the baby move! No kicks or anything yet, but I'm definitely feeling it move around. It's weird and I'm still getting used to it, but I kindof like it so far. I like knowing its there :) Hopefully I'll post again in a few weeks with a new picture - maybe by then we'll know the gender!

~mb

And we're back...

from Paris, France! We spent 10 wonderful days eating, sight-seeing, eating, drinking, shopping, and eating. It is true what they say, the food is fantastic. We had everything from crepes and chocolate croissants to organic pasta with seaweed. All of which were amazing. We took a tour of the city the first day to get our bearings, and then proceeded to really see the city the rest of the time we were there. Seeing the eiffel tower and notre dame in person was something we'll never forget. They definitely seemed larger than life. There was so much great art, it was almost overwhelming. We are sort of art enthusiasts, so we really loved going to all the famous museums. I think we had the best time just wandering around and coming across little markets and cafes, street performers and cathedrals. I found out that even having 5 years of studying French under my belt didn't seem to help me much in understanding or speaking to people. Sorry Madame S. Josh did quite well, he impressed me! Here are a couple pictures we took (2 of the over 600...we're trying to put some on flickr...stay tuned).

eiffel tower at night

notre dame at night

Going to France isn't the only big news we have...as most of you know, we're expecting our first little baby! We are so excited to finally have everyone know our wonderful news. I am 3 months along, and finally starting to feel a little better as I get out of my first trimester. Baby Bishop is due on October 31. Hopefully I will be better at updating our blog during my pregnancy. Here is a little picture that we took this weekend of what the belly looks like so far...It finally just popped out a little this past week. :)

~mb

So as I was saying...

in my post from last week, Josh and I went to a costume party. We dressed up as our friend Johnny and his daughter Freja. Here are some pics...

Josh grew out some killer sideburns, a soul patch, got his hair cut into a fauxhawk with shaved sides, and had Johnny's tattoo artist draw his tattoos on Josh's arms. All I had to do was dress up like his 4 yr. old daughter complete with skull mary janes. :) Josh actually got mistaken for Johnny a couple times at the party. Here is a picture of Josh and the real Johnny dressed like Mr T. "I pity the fool."
Life has been busy as usual which has made it hard for me to find the time to post on this blog. I just really couldn't leave the last post hanging though... I did promise these pictures after all. Hope they were worth the wait! haha.
mb