First Home Haircut

We haven't done much this week. The weather and driving conditions have been bad and Ryan apparently got a parasite, perhaps E. coli, while in Honduras last week and has been sick since Sunday. (Please keep him in your prayers.) Anyway, Ryan was feeling a little better one night this week, so we decided to attempt Caleb's first home haircut. I know this is something I need to get good at because it's just so expensive to pay to have it done, but I'll admit--it's been daunting. Caleb is great at obeying (so far), so it didn't have nearly as much to do with him as with me. I know nothing about cutting hair, but I looked up some tips online, and we gave it a whirl.

Ryan and Caleb did great, but thankfully I have many many many haircuts ahead of me to perfect this skill. Caleb's hair is shorter than we anticipated, and there are definitely a few spots I missed, but at least it's not hanging in his eyes any more.

Lovin' This Weather Too!

So, you may have noticed that about a week ago, I blogged about loving the warm winter weather. Well, we went from a high of 77 degrees on Saturday, January 29 to a high of 16 degrees on Wednesday, February 2. Crazy, huh!? Who knew things could change so much in just 4 days. We haven't gotten any snow since we moved to Graham over the summer, but man did we get hit on Tuesday. I have searched and searched online to find an official snowfall total for Tuesday but haven't been able to find anything (part of living in a small town, I'm sure). So yesterday, I went into our backyard and did some official measuring--6.5"! It only snowed/iced on Tuesday and 6.5" was what was left after 3 days, though I don't think much had melted because today's our first day above freezing since Monday.

Though these kind of conditions are common in many parts of the country, I'm guessing they're not here because the town has pretty much been shut down since Monday. Grocery stores have been open, but no school, mail or trash pickup since Monday. There's been very little traffic, too, because the streets were so icy. No salt trucks in a small town either. Our driveway is fairly flat with only a small dip before the street, but my car got stuck there for 20 minutes this morning when Caleb and I tried to go to the grocery store.

Anyway, I took Caleb out to play in the snow for a little bit on Tuesday, but he didn't know what to think. He couldn't really walk much in it because when he sank down all the way, the snow came to his knees. He sure was cute, though. (By the way, yes, those are grocery bags on Caleb's feet--we don't typically need snow boots in Texas!) :) Here are some pictures from our winter wonderland.

Lovin' This Weather!

My goodness, today was a BEAUTIFUL day! Sunny with a high in the mid to upper 60s, and the next couple of days are supposed to be even warmer. I know this is a far cry from what our Louisville friends are experiencing.

Anyway, Caleb and I spent some time playing in our backyard this afternoon, and man oh man, I love this little boy. He is 16 months of pure boy. He loves to explore, run, kick leaves, pick up sticks, say "woof woof" to other puppy dogs, and that joyful smile just melts my heart. Some friends kindly gave us a little playground, which is great because sliding is one of Caleb's favorite things these days. Here are a few shots from our time outside.

**I know Caleb is desperately in need of a haircut, but don't worry, that's on next week's To Do list. :)

Any Suggestions?

So today marked my first day in maternity pants this pregnancy. (Thank you, Mom, for my new jeans!!) Let me just say that maternity pants are seriously one of the greatest things ever created. I think I might wear them year round (even outside of pregnancy) if it weren't for having a hard time keeping them up. I vaguely remember this with Caleb, but does anyone have any suggestions on how to keep maternity pants from sliding down?

We're Having A...

Well, we're not sure yet. :) We had our ultrasound today, but our sweet baby didn't cooperate in allowing us to identify the gender, so we'll hopefully find out at our checkup in 4 weeks. The important thing is that this baby is healthy--kidneys, heart, brain, spine, abdomen, arms, legs, hands, feet--everything looks great! Praise the Lord for a good checkup.

I am curious, though, what do you think Baby Bishop #2 will be? Please comment with your answer.

16.5 Weeks

This picture is from a week and a half ago. It was a big week for Baby #2--he/she decided to make him/herself known. I really started showing that week and I was able to start feeling our precious baby move. Praise the Lord for the gift of life!

Happy Birthday, Sweet Ryan!

My love, attempting to write a single post about how thankful I am for you and for your life is daunting. You are such a wonderful man and are a tremendous blessing to your family, friends and church.

Your love for the Lord and for his word is contagious. You continually give unselfishly to serve me, Caleb and the people of our church. You are so tender, so caring and so affectionate. Our family will never doubt your devotion to us. I pray that one day I could be more like you in these areas.

Thank you for your love. Thank you for your daily sacrifice for your family and for the church. Caleb and I adore you! I pray that as we watch Caleb develop into a sweet little boy and as we anticipate the arrival of our second child that this will be one of the best years of your life.

I love you forever!

Catching Up on Videos

So I FINALLY downloaded all of the videos off of our video camera, and I'm a little embarrassed to say that they go back to April 2010! Oh well. Here are a few random videos that were all taken back in October.

Caleb uses sign language to say "more" and "please" and will also blow kisses.

Caleb's First Signs from Kelli Bishop on Vimeo.

Prior to these clips, Caleb had taken 10 steps in a row twice, but definitely continued to crawl most of the time. This was the night that he really took off walking.

Caleb Starts Walking from Kelli Bishop on Vimeo.

Ryan and I played frisbee in our backyard one afternoon, and Caleb thought it was so funny. Man, I love the sound of this little boy's laughter!

Playing Frisbee from Kelli Bishop on Vimeo.

Sweet 16

This week was a unique one in that Caleb turned 16 months and Baby #2 turned 16 weeks. Baby #2 started to show some this week, which is fun. Praise the Lord for the gift of children!

Our Little Caleb is Officially a Cowboy...

(I've been meaning to post this for a couple of months, and this is a small attempt to get caught up.)

Caleb's First Haircut

Caleb had his first haircut about a month and a half ago (really trying to catch up on blogging here). I figure I will do the vast majority of Caleb's haircuts growing up, so we wanted to make the first one special. We found a place in Wichita Falls that was specifically for kids. It was decorated as a jungle safari and Caleb got to sit in a Jeep for his cut. He sat very still and was very calm throughout the process. About halfway through, he realized that he had been holding a car in his hand under the cover and so pulled it out to check it out. After only about 5 minutes, our baby was transformed into a little boy.

Here's are the before and after pictures. Such a little gentleman!

Caleb's First Birthday Party

Caleb, you had a monkey-themed party for your first birthday party. We figured this was fitting because you certainly are our "little monkey", constantly climbing onto and into everything you possibly can.

We had your party a few days late, but on the morning of your actual birthday, you woke up to 12 balloons lying on the floor in the living room. You think balloons are balls and immediately started saying, "Ba ba ba" when you saw them. You were so excited. Later that day, your daddy and I took you to Walmart to pick out a present. You picked a fairly small orange rubber truck, which you still love to play with.

Here was your party invitation (with all personal info changed):



After your daddy prayed for your life and for the food, everyone dug in. The food was simple--hot dogs, chips, monkey bread and cake. I made the birthday cake that you ate in the shape of a monkey head with chocolate frosting and banana cake.

The Cautherns were so sweet to host this special event in their back yard. There were yard games (Ladder Golf, Washers and Croquet) for the older kids and adults and an inflatable pool filled with balls for the younger kids. (I must confess that I copied this idea from my friend, Kristi, who also did this for her son's birthday party.) You LOVE balls and were so excited to be surrounded by them.














After everyone ate, you got to experience your first birthday cake. To be honest, it was a little anti-climatic. Your daddy and I were half expecting you to dive in head first, not taking much of a break to breath. You, however, were very methodical and actually pretty neat as you ate. At one point, you did put your face in the cake, but I think it was only after your daddy prompted you to. You seemed to enjoy your sweet treat, but were pretty interested in the blow-up monkey that was sitting next to you too.

It took you so long to eat your cake that we ended up opening your presents another day.

It was a very special day, and we were grateful to celebrate your life with some of our family and so many new friends. We love you, little one!

Great Offer!

I’m not sure how familiar people are with Shutterfly, but I’m a big Shutterfly fan. I’ve used this website regularly to send out monthly pictures of Caleb. In the process, I’ve discovered many of the great promotions that Shutterfly does. They’ll often offer free prints, free shipping or even big discounts on their many products.

For Christmas this year, they’re doing a promotion where if you write a blog post about Shutterfly, you get 50 free Christmas cards! How great is that!? What a great way to save money during a more expensive time of year! Click here to find out more about it.

I haven’t even begun to think about Christmas (or even Thanksgiving for that matter : ) ), but as I looked through the Shutterfly website, I found these great cards.

I love the different color schemes and particularly love the option to put more than one picture on your Christmas card. Plus, there are so many great designs to choose from!

They also have really cute birth announcements that maybe we’ll use next time around.

Shutterfly also carries a variety of products from stationery to calendars to these Christmas ornaments.

I hope this offer and these ideas can help someone else too!

Two More Teeth

I have so much blogging to catch up on, but since this is short and easy, we'll post today's big news:

-Caleb had two teeth break through today (second bottom right one and second top left one)

-He was diagnosed with his first ear infection (left side) and will therefore be starting his first round of antibiotics :(

I was shocked to find out Caleb had an ear infection. He had been more clingy than normal but hasn't really been fussing much. I guess that's the (very small) downside to having such a happy baby.

Happy Monday from Graham!

Never Mind...It's Official

I wrote a post this morning asking at what point you would consider your baby to be officially walking. Well, Caleb is now officially walking all over the place. Before today, Caleb's record number of consecutive steps was 10, but now it's somewhere between 30 and 40. He's so proud of himself (as are we) and is loving his new trick.

When is it Official?

During a discussion about babies walking a couple months ago, a friend of ours mentioned that we would need to determine what, in our opinions, would constitute Caleb as "walking". At that point, Caleb had only taken 1 step a couple of times, so we didn't give it much thought. A few days after that conversation, though, Caleb took 5 steps. (This was five days after his first birthday.) Then he waited a couple weeks before he did it again. Over the last few weeks, he's added several more steps to his attempts at walking. His most recent accomplishment has been 10 steps, which he's done a couple of times.

As I thought about his accomplishment yesterday, it hit me that 10 steps is a lot, and it got me to thinking, "When is it official?" Though he's taken 10 steps twice now, it's not like he's always trying to walk because he definitely crawls the majority of the time. So I'd love your opinions, when do you think you would say a baby is walking?

1 Year!

*I'm sorry this blog post is more than a month late this time!


At the beginning of this month you started sticking your tongue out and saying, "Num num" when you're hungry or when you see your bottle. I'm not sure where you got "Num num", but it's cute. How nice it is that you're starting to be able to communicate with us more.

I finished weaning you at the beginning of this month, and thankfully you didn't have any problems with it.

You eat pretty much anything I give you--cantaloupe, bananas, grapes, watermelon, tomatoes, black olives, onions, green bell peppers, corn, peas, green beans, rice, beans, etc. The only thing you don't always seem to want is lettuce. I'm thankful that you're not a picky eater, and I pray this trend continues!


























You continually prove to be a little monkey, which is why you had a monkey-theme birthday party. You like to crawl and sit inside drawers, on top of tables, chairs--anything at all that you can reach, and you LOVE climbing stairs.

You took your first step this month. It was just one and it was a few weeks before you decided to do it again (2 days after your first birthday). I've been thinking for months now that you were going to take off walking. This was partly because you've been standing so well for so long and have good balance and are really good and quick at cruising around on the furniture. You'll even dance and squat up and down while standing, but you're just not terribly interested in walking on your own yet. One day, it will come, I know, but for now, I'm thankful to carry you. I know it won't be too long before you'll want to "do it on your own".

You did receive your first battle wounds this month, but you weren't even climbing or anything. Somehow you lost your balance while standing near a metal chair and smacked your face on it. This is not a good picture of you, but you can somewhat see the bruised knot above and between your eyes, the scratches above, below and to the right your right eye and on the left side of your nose. Poor thing!

You have learned how to throw a ball, which quickly became a fun game for you. You would throw the ball to me (or wherever it happened to go), and I would roll it back to you. I praised you for your new trick, but then for a little while, you began to throw other toys as well. Oops! Thankfully you never threw out of anger or anything, and I'm glad that it didn't last long and now you've stopped throwing other toys.

You enjoy putting things inside of other things now; for example, you love putting your duckie into a small plastic cup or putting your bottle into a cup holder.

This month your love for talking on the phone developed. You've always been fascinated by them and wanted to put them in your mouth, but now you'll pretend anything is a phone (usually a remote control) and put it up to your right ear to talk on it. You'll even tilt your head to the right when you do it.

You are truly a happy baby and people still always comment on it, but I've gotten very small glimpses of temper tantrums. Sometimes if I take something from you that you shouldn't have, you'll cry pretty loudly for a few seconds.

You LOVE taking baths as well as swimming.

You rode your first horsey this month. Well, actually, it was a toy horse in the church nursery, but you loved it, which I think is only fitting seeing as how you're a true cowboy now. :)

Your favorite toys this month are balls and your yellow duckie.

You now can say "mama", "dada" and "ba" (ball) and mean what you're saying. At this point, you think that balloons are balls, so for your birthday, you woke up to 12 inflated blue balloons in the living room. You were so excited and immediately started in with, "ba ba ba ba".

You have 5 teeth--3 on top and 2 on bottom.

My favorite thing that you started doing this month was blowing kisses. Oh my goodness, how this melts my heart! We'll tell you to blow someone kisses and you'll open your hand and put it up to your mouth. Instead of moving your hand away from your mouth, you'll just keep it there. Too cute! We wanted to encourage you to keep blowing kisses, so we would say, "Yea!" and clap for you after you did it. Now every time you blow a kiss, you'll start clapping for yourself. You'll also sometimes give me kisses on the mouth when I ask for them.

And now, a final picture that melts my heart. This is so rare now that you're such a big boy, but you're definitely still our baby!

Oh, sweet little boy, I can't believe you're ours! How the Lord ever chose us to be your parents is beyond me. We are so grateful for you and for the joy that you have brought into our lives. We prayed for you for so long before you came, before you were even conceived, and yet never in our wildest dreams could we have imagined a more perfect child. Years of prayer, 9 months of pregnancy, 15 hours 43 minutes of labor, 1 hour of pushing, and within the blink of an eye, you were here and our lives were forever changed. An 8lb 10 oz, 21" long bundle of pure joy. We love you more than words could ever express, precious Caleb, and we pray that one day you will feel the same way about your Creator. May a life of pursuing and seeking to glorify Jesus Christ be your ultimate goal and desire!

Happy birthday, sweet Caleb!

Overnight Diapers

Though we've only used them one night, these Huggies diapers are life changing! Our poor son has been waking up each morning absolutely drenched because he had leaked out of his diaper. I'm not talking a little leakage--it's been a ton. Yesterday morning, I went in to get him and found that he was completely wet down his front side. I'm talking all the way from his neck to his wrists and ankles on both sides. Poor guy! Even his sheet and mattress pad were soaked. Caleb hasn't been terribly upset about it, but he's sopping wet and cold as a result.

We tried different brands of diapers and even tried going up a size at night. Nothing has helped until these Huggies Overnight Diapers. We went up a size in these for night, and sweet Caleb woke this morning completely dry. YEA!!! Thank you, Lord, for this brilliant invention!

A Sweet Reminder

Forgive my blogging hiatus. Over the last month, we had Ryan's installation service as Senior Pastor, Caleb's first birthday and birthday party and moved into our new rent house. I have more updates to write (including Caleb's one year update), but for now, I'm just writing about a sweet reminder that I was recently given.

Moving to Graham, Texas was not on our radar. Really moving at all wasn't on our radar, and this obviously isn't a good time to try and sell a home, especially in Louisville, but this is what God clearly desires for our life, and He's not even surprised by the housing market. We're so thankful to be here and have been richly blessed by the love of the people at Graham Bible Church, but there have been some obstacles we've been working to overcome. Lots of little things including getting a local bank account, which can't be done until we get our Texas drivers licenses, which can't be done until we get our car registered here, which can't be done until we get our car inspected here, which can't be done without our car title. Unfortunately, in the mass of boxes and papers, I can't find our car title. I know it's here, but in an effort to save time, I've simply ordered another copy. All this to say, even small things have become a bit of an ordeal.

Selling our home is tough as well. The market has changed drastically since we bought our home 3 years ago, and there's no doubt we're going to lose money selling it, but we're really hoping to minimize that loss as much as possible. Well, there's currently a contract on our house--PRAISE THE LORD--but the morning after our house was inspected, I woke up to an email of repair demands from the buyers. Apparently, the buyers won't budge on what repairs are done and our realtor feels that most of the requests would be common to most buyers. Unfortunately, these repairs are likely to cost several thousand dollars.

Let me pause here to say I'm sorry for all the details, but I'm trying to explain my mindset the day I received this sweet reminder.

Anyway, the money that it will cost to do the home repairs plus the money we have to bring to closing plus the money we're already losing can be somewhat overwhelming. I know our God is good and will provide for our needs, but sometimes it just seems so hard and daunting. I know this probably points to a lack of trust and peace in Him in this area, and this is something I'm working on.

So, I woke up to that repair demand email, then discovered through another email that an order I had placed for pajamas for Caleb was cancelled. Our washing machine broke during the move, so doing laundry has been tricky and somewhat rare, not to mention that Caleb only has 3 pajamas that fit him. (The rest are size 6 months, so there's no way they'd work.) Caleb seems to get a little chilly at night, so we've been having him sleep in anything warm we can find, which has included 18-24 month long sleeve shirts, cargo pants, etc. This kid needs some pajamas, and I was really anticipating this order I had placed 2 weeks earlier to arrive soon. But it didn't because the order was cancelled.

I'm not a crier. At least I don't really think I am--maybe Ryan would say differently, but on that particular day, I remember crying 5 different times. I don't know why exactly I was so emotional, but it was a rough day.

A precious friend here in Graham called me randomly that day to say she was thinking about me and we got to talking about my day, and I mentioned the things that had been frustrating. Well, a little bit later, this same friend calls and asks if she can bring something by. She arrives with a little gift bag containing a pair of brand new pajamas for Caleb. Her son is a little more than a month older than Caleb and had recently received two of the exact same pajamas. This sweet girl had planned on exchanging the second pair, but wanted Caleb to have something to wear that night so gave them to him instead. I was so incredibly touched by her care and thoughtfulness.

I was thinking later that night about those pajamas and was reminded that God cares about our every concern, and He will provide for ALL of our needs. Thank you, Lord, for this sweet reminder!

I Can't Believe It!

One year ago today, little one, we were holding you in our arms for the first time! I can't believe it's already been a year, and yet, it seems somewhat difficult to remember what life was like before you came.

Today when we were at Walmart, you were sitting in the cart and a sweet old lady walked by. "Aren't you precious!?" she said. "That sweet smile of yours would make anybody feel better." That's certainly how I feel, and I praise him for your joyful spirit.

I'll write a more in-depth post later, as well as a recap of your first birthday party, but for now know that we celebrate your life and thank God for the sweet gift that you are.