Bishop Bonding

Brandon, Jill, Joshua and Aby came to visit last week to celebrate Ryan’s birthday. They were here Wednesday night through Saturday night.

As always, our time was filled with games, laughing, playing with the kids and just making precious memories.

On Thursday, we visited Lifeway and Archiver’s. Archiver’s is this wonderful scrapbooking store. They don’t have a location in Nashville yet, so Jill loved getting fun scrapbook supplies while she was here.

That night we made dinner and ate some of the Triple Decker Chocolate and Raspberry cake I made for Ryan’s birthday. (It wasn’t a week old—I waited to make Ryan’s birthday cake until that day since we were in Chicago on his actual birthday.)

Jill and I drove to the Gap Clearance Center near Cincinnati on Friday. For those of you who don’t know, the Gap Clearance Center is an amazing place. It’s where they send all the clothes that are leftover at Old Navy, Gap and Banana Republic. Stuff is marked down wicked cheap. I spent $21 and got a huge bag full of clothes. Scarves and hats for $0.25, shirts for $1.99. It’s great! I am one of those people who doesn’t like to buy anything unless it’s on sale and I’m getting a really good deal. This is totally my kind of store. The last time I went, I found cashmere sweaters for Ryan for $9.99!

It does require some patience, though. You may not find two shirts a like, so you have to do a lot of digging to find what you’re looking for. Anyway, it was fun, and Jill was equally excited about her good deals. Before we left to go home, we stopped at Chipotle to get lunch for ourselves and for the boys. Unfortunately, Louisville doesn’t have a Chipotle yet, so we savor it every time we can get it.

While we were shopping, the boys took Joshua, Aby and Wally to the park. Wally finally got to play with a toy he got for Christmas. It’s called a Chuckit or something like that. It’s this stick that picks up a tennis ball (so you don’t have to touch the slobbery ball) and throws it really far for the dog to fetch it. Ryan and Joshua also played on the playground together.

On Friday night we had a...umm...interesting experience at Uno Pizza. Our waiter was pretty rude and there were several hairs in our stuff. No wonder they received a B rating for sanitation. Nevertheless, we had a great time. We headed home and played Sequence, ASAP and Killer Uno.

I had to work on Saturday, but we all met for dinner after I got off. It was sad to see Brandon, Jill, Joshua and Aby leave to go home after dinner, but we’ve already made plans to see them next month. Thank you, Lord, for placing us closer to Brandon and Jill during this time. It is such a blessing to be able to cultivate our relationship with them on a regular basis.