TODAY was THE DAY!

I don't have much time to post as we are on our way to a Science Fair at the school, but for those who I haven't talked to already today and are wondering, we did have our ultrasound. I was SO ANXIOUS/EXCITED about it I hardly slept last night. This baby was by far the wiggliest on ultrasound of any baby so far. The technician kept calling the baby a "stinker" because it was hard for her to get measurements w/ the baby moving around so much. The baby had the cutest profile ever! We even got to see a big yawn and it was just precious! Anyway, most everything checked out good. There is one thing they are going to monitor (by doing an ultrasound again in 4 weeks) and I'll post more about that soon. I'll also ask Mark to scan in the cute ultrasound pictures and post some of those.

Well, enough of referring to the baby as "the baby". We're going to have a BOY! It was very apparent to the tech and to us even. We're happy! Ella took the news pretty good. The expression on her face was classic. A few minutes later she said, "Four brothers, I'd be frustrated if I had 5 brothers!" Pretty cute and she still seems excited. John was quick to share some of the perks of being the only girl w/ her, such as never having to share her room. We've decided well just always stick together, meaning Ella and I.

Anyway, we're happy and I'll post more later.

A little bit of everything

One of Ella just being cute.

I like this picture!Mark made another car that John raced in a different division.

Cooper's car is in the lead!

Coop showing his car to the audience.

Cooper's pinewood derby car

We took the kids to see John's play last Friday night.

Another picture of John before a show.

Ella and Seth being silly w/ stickers on their forehead.

I feel like this past week or so we have been going like crazy! We go through stages where we take lots of pictures and then we'll not take any for a long time. Well, we're in a picture stage, so I just thought I'd share some of our recent pictures. Tonight John has a cast party and that is it as far as the Music Theater of Idaho goes! We are so excited! He is cast in A Christmas Carol in December, so we'll have to see if we've all recovered by then. John has gotten quite behind on his school work and on piano. It's been hard for him to get everything done. I'm looking forward to a normal routine now, just regular busy. Cooper had pinewood derby this last weekend, and had a lot of fun. He won about half of his races and seemed pleased w/ his thunderbolt race car. John has a big science project due on Thursday (which he's know about for a month, but has been too busy to do anything about) so Mark and him are going to be busy working on that this week. Thursday is also our 20 week ultrasound, so we're very excited for that. I can hardly wait. I just hope everything is healthy and well, I always worry so much. I guess that's not all that uncommon. Hopefully we'll be able to see if we're getting a girl or boy baby. Mark always says he doesn't care as long as it's either of those two. I've been gone all morning on R.S. visits. It's always fun to see new babies and to get to know the new sisters. I now have a messy house to straighten and tons of laundry (the weekend always seems to do that to me no matter how hard I try to stay caught up). I've also got to make a main dish and a dessert for the cast party tonight, it's supposed to be at a park and the weather isn't exactly nice. I'm sure ready for it to really be Spring. Well, I'll post a few of our misc. pictures.

Oliver!

John in the middle with the Artful Dodger to his right and Oliver to his left.

In past posts I have made mention of John being in the play, Oliver. Well last Friday was opening night and it has been so fun to watch! There were 3 performances last weekend and there are 3 more this weekend (and 4 school performances during the week). Mark and I have been switching off going since it's quite expensive to take the family to each performance. We are taking the kids this weekend though. I was lucky enough to be able to go on opening night. John plays two parts, one of the workhouse kids and one of the pick-pockets in Fagin's Gang. He did such a good job! He knew all of the songs and knew all of the dance steps really well. I was so proud of him up there, he looked like he was having the time of his life. I couldn't help but get a little emotional looking at him up on the stage. It seems like not too long ago he was my little baby, and now he's (partially) grown up and trying new things. Mark said that one night after rehearsals the director said that John was the most polite one of the entire cast. As a mother that made me feel more happy than if he was the lead of the whole show. Overall if has been a good experience for him, just extremely time consuming. I feel it has been worth the sacrifices though. He's made some good friends that he'll miss not seeing when the show is over. I couldn't close this post about Oliver without thanking Mark for his support in picking up John at all hours of the night and even sleeping in the van with him one night when he had to be back for practice at 4:45 a.m. I was lucky enough to take the driving shifts that were at more reasonable hours. John couldn't have done it without Dad! Thank you also to all of our family who have tickets to come and see a performance this weekend. We appreciate your love and support and we hope you'll enjoy the show! How couldn't you enjoy watching over 100 kids who have each worked so hard!?

Better Late Than Never, I guess

Some of the Gunnerson cousins on the tramp.

Ella in her Easter dress.

Sethy finding an egg by the little windmill.

Coop w/ all of his eggs.

John w/ Grandma Gunnerson behind him.

Grandma Bishop and Becca.

Cooper with Ella, Becca, Celeste and Jonah.

John and Eden looking cute.

I really like this one of Seth for some reason.

Ella looking for an egg.

I'm not doing well at keeping up w/ our blog, but I haven't completely given up yet. I am still struggling to feel good most of the time. The pregnancy sickness has gotten some better, so I'm grateful for that. This pregnancy reminds me of my pregnancy w/ Cooper in some ways. I really struggle w/ breathlessness and feel so weak a lot of the time. I felt that way when I was pregnant w/ him and thankfully it went away after he was born. Of course it is all worth it though.

I thought I would post some pictures from our Easter. We had a nice weekend. We were able to see my mom and grandma on that Friday and then we went to Bishop's house on Saturday for a dinner and Easter egg hunt in the yard. The kids had fun and got plenty of candy. On Sunday we had a really nice Sacrament Meeting, the speakers did a wonderful job. In the afternoon we headed to Gunnerson's place for another yummy dinner and Easter egg hunt in the yard. We enjoyed seeing so much family. For Easter we gave each of the kids candy, of course, and a book. Overall, it was an enjoyable weekend.

Other than that, things haven't been too unusual, busy like normal. John's play he's in begins April 11th, so practices are every evening for a few hours sometimes. He's exhausted (and so are we) but he's loving it and we're excited to watch him put all of the songs he's learned and all of the dance moves he's memorized into action. We had a nice Spring Break. I wasn't feeling too great, so we were pretty low key. We went out to lunch a few times and rented videos and stuff like that. Cooper and Ella had little sleepovers at cousins/friends houses and John had Oliver practice as much as two times a day for a couple of the days of Spring Break. Amy called and wanted to end our Spring Break w/ a bang, so we met her and her kids at Carl's Jr. and had the kids play for a couple of hours. Pretty fun!

Well, I'll upload some of these pictures and hopefully I'll post again before a months time.

Happy Birthday Seth!

A sweet picture of a sweet boy~taken a few months ago.

Seth blowing out the candles on his 2nd b-day.

Seth and Mom, a little over one year old.

Seth's first Christmas - 10 mos old. Hilarious!

One of my favorite newborn pictures of Seth.

A classic picture of Seth just after he was born.

Three years ago today Seth Gordon Bishop joined our family. What a special little guy he is! He has brought so much love and joy to each of us. He has had his own little personality and opinions since the day he was born. He has always been very inquisitive and full of fun (sometimes mischief). Most everyone agrees he looks like his Daddy, some even call him Mini-Mark. He's a cutie, that's for sure. It's hard to believe how quickly time passes, soon he won't be the baby of our family. It's been rewarding to watch him learn and grow and become quite independent. Just the other week he got Mark's car keys and went out to the garage and started the van. No joke! That gave us quite a scare and we are keeping the car keys away from him much earlier than we thought we'd have to. He's a real smarty, the other day I came downstairs to find that he had made 3 pitchers of a punch type drink mix. He ripped open each of the containers of powder and poured them into the pitchers and then filled each w/ water from the fridge. He watches what you do and then does the same. We'll have to only do good things, because Seth is always watching and discovering. One of my favorite things he does right now is when he says, "Oh goodness!". Your family loves you so much Sethy, we hope your special day is lots of fun!

A good excuse

Sorry for my absence from blogging. I have a good enough excuse though. I'm pregnant, we found out just after the new year and we're very happy about it. I'm just sick! It's actually better than my other four pregnancies (the throwing up aspect) though I feel plenty sick still. What has thrown us for a loop is I ended up in the hospital for 4 nights w/ blood clots in my leg. This is a problem that I had in my pregnancy w/ Cooper, but didn't have w/ Ella and Seth using a preventative blood thinner. Unfortunately, this time for some reason the medicine didn't prevent them from forming. It wasn't quite as painful as my experience w/ Cooper, since I was aware of the symptoms and caught them earlier, but it was still plenty scary. The threat is that the clots could break off and travel to your lungs, causing real problems. We were blessed to not have that happen and I think my leg is healing and I am on a much higher dose of the blood thinner for the remainder of the pregnancy to hopefully keep any more from forming. As to why I have this problem, they did over a thousand dollars in blood work and genetic testing to see if there was any other reason besides pregnancy (I've never had the problem not pregnant) and so far everything has come back negative. That makes me very grateful, since this is our last baby I hopefully won't deal w/ this again. Anyway, if this was boring to you, hopefully you just skimmed over it, but at least the details and the event are recorded for our families journaling purposes. I hope that my kids and grandchildren never have this problem.

The baby is due September 11th. What a day I know, but I usually have my babies 1-2 weeks early, so I guess it won't matter. I'm about 12 weeks along now. I look forward to feeling better soon. I've really been useless. Taking a shower makes me so nauseated, weird hah? I've picked up a bad habit of watching much more t.v. and playing a game called virus buster on John's Nintendo DS. I hold the family record for a high score of 868. It helps to take my mind off of feeling sick. I'm so excited and look forward to American Idol each week, I haven't missed an episode yet, it's sad I know. Mark has taken such good care of us and our ward was nice enough to bring dinners for a while. We're slowly getting back into the swing of things and the house will recover one day I'm hoping. For now just the bare essentials (like blogging, right?) are getting done. Ella wants a girl baby and since it's our last we think that it would be great for her to have a sister also. We know how sweet baby boys are so that would be nice too, we are just praying for healthy!

The kids are doing well in school and Mark is in training at work for a new department, so he's happy about that. Ella is learning to read and it's fun to see her progress. The boys are still in piano and John's Oliver rehearsals have started. Next week he has practice M-F, it's a crazy schedule since the play isn't until April. He seems to enjoy it though. Thankfully, Cooper isn't in a sport right now. Seth is really talking these days, in complete sentences even! He's a cutie and has been my little buddy while I've been sick. Sorry, no pictures of anything to post.

Anyway, Sethy's b-day is next week, so we'll have to post some pictures and blog again then, but for now just an update.

Catching Up

The Christmas Wreath for the grave. The kids also wrote notes and drew pictures.The 4 kids at the beautiful cemetery. They loved the winter icicles!

Gunnerson cousins (the cutie babies)

Gunnerson cousins (the boys, those in town)

Gunnerson Cousins (the girls, those in town)

Ella w/ Grandpa George Parker in Mark's new BYU hat

Our Nativity Scene

Steve and Amanda's house on Christmas Eve

Sethy w/ his new toy

Ella w/ her HSM dvd's and her new pink gameboy

Cooper opening his tank from Santa that shoots air soft bb's

John w/ his new piano sheet music

Me w/ my new brown coat from Mark

Mark w/ his Bourne DVD's on Christmas Morning

All of the Gunnerson/Bishop, Thurston, Tanner and Burnett kids

Wow, it's been a long time! I know we don't have a lot of people who check out our blog, but for those who do I thought I should make a new entry (and for our own family's journaling purposes). Christmas and New Years were exhausting, but wonderful. We got to see lots of friends and got to spend some quality time with each of the sides of our families. We have 4 different sides in total. We celebrated Christmas w/ the Gunnerson's on the 23rd of December w/ a Swedish style celebration. The Gunnersons are Swedish, so we had a Swedish type dinner served in different courses and learned more about the Swedish heritage. Bob's sister Christy, and her husbad Jerel, really went to a lot of work to make it a special evening that everyone enjoyed very much. The best part was this DVD slideshow that they put together of our past family Christmas times together dating way back. They gave each of us a copy as a gift, what a keepsake! We went to the cemetery earlier that day to take a Christmas wreath made of bells out to Bob's grave. Our time at the cemetery is always special to us.

We were able to see my mother and grandma and do a little Christmas gift exchange earlier in the month of December before Ella's family birthday party. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of them to post. I was able to see them again shortly after Christmas and we had a nice time visiting again.

On Christmas Eve day we were able to go out to George and RaNae Parker's house in Kuna and have dinner w/ them. It was a quiet afternoon, but it was so good to see them. On Christmas Eve we went to Steve and Amanda's house and celebrated w/ the Bishops. We had more food and Mom Bishop read the Nativity story while the kids acted it out. They were a bit wound up, but cute nonetheless.

Christmas morning at our home was great. It was nice all being together and I love to see the kids excited about their gifts. We went over to Mom and Dad Bishop's house Christmas afternoon.

John had a friend from school over during the break and we also got together w/ the Thurstons, Tanners and Burnetts one day. All of our kids have been friends since birth but we don't seem to see enough of each other now days, so it was great to all get together and let the kids catch up. On New Year's Eve we were able to see some other friends, Roman and Heather, and their family. They are in the process of adopting some children and they'll have 8 kids now! We had lots of good food and conversation and played Settlers together.

Some more of the Parker's (Justin, Mindi and their kids and Gary and his girls) were in town after Christmas, so it was fun to have them over our place for dinner and a game of Cranium. It was nice being with them although the time was short.

Off and on since New Year's we've had sick kids and I have felt sick, so I still don't feel in the swing of things yet, and my house can testify to that. As a matter of fact, the whiteness of the computer screen is making my head hurt and making me feel dizzy, so I think I'll post some pictures and close for now.