Four and Seven Months and Other Random Thoughts

Today marks the day 4 months ago that Samuel was born.  He still doesn't sleep through the night.  But we still love him.  He's a sweet baby and we are so very happy we got him!

A few days ago was the 7 month anniversary of Andy and Hana coming home to us.  It's been the craziest 7 months of my life.  Super intense.  Being the mother of 8 children is harder than I expected in some ways, and easier than I expected in other ways.  There have been so many incredible growing and learning experiences for everyone in our family this year.  It's been the best year for us for sure. I am in love with my family. But truly, I know I keep saying it, but *Intense* is really the best word I can think of to describe our life.  Daylight hours are always noisy in our home.  Very noisy.  My house is almost always messy.  Laundry alone is a full time job that I have given up trying to do justice with.  So I pay someone else to do it for me.  And it's worth every stinkin dime!  I love my life as crazy as it is.  But I've got some confessions...

  Confession:  When I get down about the chaos and mess, I like to watch episodes of "Hoarders" and "Hoarding:  Buried Alive" on Netflix to help me put it all into perspective and feel better about things.
  Another confession:  My favorite part of the day use to be to take my bra off.  But now, I don't like to even add the bother of wearing one much of the time.  Grossed you out didn't I?  Sorry.
  Now my favorite parts of the day are 1:  When I clean up dinner and announce to everyone "The kitchen is officially closed for the day!"  and 2:  When all the kids have actually fallen asleep at night.  Sounds pretty pathetic hu?
  I do have moments though where I look at all of them and I laugh because the joy of all these little people takes me beyond grins.  True, true.  And that happens quite frequently.  But I will once again confess, I also have moments where I look at all of them and think to myself that I'm nuts for doing this.
  And finally, I want to say that I get through all this craziness because I married the greatest husband.  He's perfect for me and I'm madly in love with him.  The end.

We're planning on moving

 Steve and I put earnest money down on this lot.  What do you think?

This lot is just a few miles away from where we live now.  So our kids will be able to stay in the same school and most of our life will remain the same.  Actually, it's close enough to the school and a fantastic park that they can walk to!  So I wont be spending nearly as much time in the car driving the kids to and from school and all their school clubs.  Huge bonus for me!  We have the plans made up and are excited about what will be our new home.  It wont be much bigger than the house we have now, but it is going to be much more function-able for our family of 10.  The rooms are not very big, but this is what it will consist of.
The upstairs will have a great room and kitchen, laundry room, mud room, 2 bathrooms and 3 bedrooms.  (A very large pantry too :)  The basement will have 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms and a family room.  We are really looking forward to it!
Ground should be broken near the start of Feb and we should be moving in in May!  

California Christmas

The Tuesday before Christmas I drove all the kids down to Bakersfield California to spend the week with my parents.  Me and EIGHT kids in the car.  No other adult.  For 12 hours. I survived.  And I was proud of myself for doing that much.  It was good to be home.  My parents are planning on moving to Idaho in the near future so this was my last opportunity to show all my kids my hometown and old home.  It was such a great trip.  Here's some photos from it.

 My Dad being a sweet Grandpa with a couple of our girls.

 Christmas morning.  Very early.  So early, it wasn't "bright and early yet."  My sister Anna and her family were there too.  It made it so much fun to spend that day with them!  My kids love their Butler cousins.

 These photos were all forced upon them before they could open any gifts.

 The traditional "surprise" look when they see their presents.

This year we did something a bit different.  All of our kids (besides the babies who didn't care which end was up,) decided that they wanted to do something nice for Christmas.  A present for Jesus rather than for them.  We have a budget of about $30 per child each year for Christmas.  This year they each gave that $30 to a charity of their choice.  Most of them chose to put it into Humanitarian Aid, which we thought was neat.  But I did spend about $10 on each of them at the Dollar Store and got them stockings.  Those were fun.  Plus, they got some gifts from their Grandparents that they loved.  I have to say that this Christmas felt a lot more meaningful and we all really enjoyed it for so many reasons.

Samuel's blessing day

Samuel was blessed in our home in a private family gathering the Sunday prior to Thanksgiving.  It was wonderful.  He was perfect and we enjoyed sharing the day with lots of family.  My parents came to town and my mother had knitted this adorable Christening outfit for him.  See:

Love, love, love this baby!!!!

Halloween

So the order on these photos came up all random.  But here you go.  Celeste:  Witch.  (Her pick.)

 Andy:  Spiderman.  (He's a huge fan and was so excited about his costume!  A bit disappointed when it didn't shoot out webs from his hands as he had anticipated.)

 Jonah:  Graduate.  (We've used this "costume" a few years now.  It's really my old HS graduation cap and gown.)  This was fitting for Jonah, our total brainiac.

 Eden:  Wolf.  (She's obsessed with dogs and animals.  So yeah, she chose her costume.)

 Becca:  Red Riding Hood.

 Charity:  Pumpkin.  (An old recycled costume from bygone years.)

 The seven oldest Bishop kids.

 Hana:  Tina Turner.  (We couldn't find a Tina Turner dress, so used this flapper one.  Wig was unnecessary with her head of hair.)

Halloween was a blast!  I hate Halloween.  Usually.  But this year was so much fun!  When the older kids were explaining to Hana and Andy what Halloween was, they had a pretty laughable reaction.  Like "What?  You're kidding me.  You dress up in a costume and then go door to door and get candy?  No way."  They asked Steve and I to confirm this strange tale because they weren't buying it.  Americans are weird!
We took the kids to a trunk or treat a few nights prior and Hana took off getting all the goodies she could.  Andy looked at me and said he was scared.  He didn't want to do it.  He couldn't remember what he was supposed to say.  He kept asking me to remind him how to say "Trick or Treat!"  Then I dragged him up to the first car and made him do it.  He saw that candy placed in his bag and then he went nuts.  He quickly ran from car to car with complete thrill, saying "Trick or Treat!"  He loved it!
Halloween night was fun too.  They went trick or treating for a couple of hours!  They got probably close to 15 pounds of candy combined.  It was the best Halloween ever for me!

My New Year's Resolutions

Make 'em public I say to put more pressure on yourself to really stick to those resolutions.  Either that or to make yourself feel like more of a loser because now everyone knows you can't stick with them.  I'm hoping the first scenario ends up being the case.

1-  I'm wanting to lose weight just like everyone else.  10 lbs would be nice, but I certainly wouldn't argue with more weight. 
2-  I want to successfully train for and complete the Wasatch Back Ragnar Relay, which is in June this year. 
3-  I also want to complete my first triathlon.
4-  I want to finally finish writing the Book of Mormon out by hand.  I set this goal years ago, and I'm only halfway through it because I keep temporarily quitting.  Please be the year that I actually finish!
5-  I want to rid myself of this lame, yet horrible addiction to cracking my left big toe.  How stupid is that?!  But it's true, I've been doing it for years and I can't seem to stop.  Drives me nuts.