The Cheezy Christmas Letter

Merry Christmas!
What an eventful year for our little family! One year ago today we were living with our good friend, rushing around frantically each weekend looking for a house to buy, and going through all the joys, (and pains) of my pregnancy with our little Aiden. Today we are knee-deep in piles of cloth diaper laundry, have a living room full of baby toys, and are trying to have Aiden help create some homemade wooden Christmas ornaments.
Just as we were about to give up on the house hunt- (about 2 months before Aiden was due) we found the perfect place! I had called up Tim and told him that I loved this house that had just gone on the market earlier that day. He then told me he found the perfect house that morning as well. It turned out to be the same house! It was meant to be!
Two weeks before Aiden arrived we moved into our new house. Thankfully we had a lot of help from our families because it’s pretty impossible to get down and scrub a kitchen floor with a huge, pregnant belly! Believe me I tried but ended up with a beet red face as I was gasping for air! ☺
On April 3, 2009 our precious baby Aiden decided to make his grand entrance into this world. I went into labor around 3 am and after what seemed to me like several days of a drug-free labor and delivery, Aiden finally arrived at 10:55 that night. He has really been an amazingly easy baby so far. We like to think it’s due to our expert parenting skills but really he takes after his easygoing Daddy. Unless he’s hungry than watch out! ☺ Having Aiden in our lives now is such a blessing. We’ve never imagined that having this little person would make us smile and laugh so much. We love how he crawls around and making motorboat noises when he’s content. We love the way his chubby cheeks bounce when going over a bump in the stroller. We get a kick out of his big grin and the way he laughs when I sit him on my lap to nurse. Or when he looks over at us and says, “Ga!” as if It’s the most profound thing anyone has ever said! ☺ He has made life so much more exciting every day! We are so very thankful for him!
Some fun trips we’ve taken this year include Portland, Oregon to visit family, our annual Tahoe vacation, and trips up to our family’s cabin near Pinecrest Lake in the Sierra.
With everyday life there is work for Tim to go to, playgroups and baby gym for Aiden and I, the usual endless housework and cooking, my newfound blogging addiction: http://blissedoutbaby.blogspot.com/, trying to find a good church family, the final stages of unpacking from the move, and so on. We are so fortunate that I am able to stay at home with Aiden for the time being- We are truly cherishing this season of our life.
We wish you all a Merry Christmas and many blessings in the New Year! Love, Tim, Laura and Aiden

You are 6 months Old!

On Oct.3, you turned 6 months old! Your Daddy and I can't believe that it's already been so long and you are such a big boy now! You have been doing the army crawl to get around and explore our house! You love to get into Mommy's magazines underneath the coffee table and pull out everything thats under there so we finally got smarter than you and put all your toys under there :)
You also have a newfound fascination with wires! Maybe it's because you see how we use wires so much in our life but if they are left out for you to find, you will pull and play with them for hours! It's amazing what can entertain a baby! :)
We taught you the baby sign for "milk" and now you do it to Mommy when you are hungry. It's the cutest thing ever! You'll scoot up near me, look up at me with your beautiful hazel eyes, and sign "milk."
You smile on command too. All we have to do is look at you, smile, say your name and you get the most happy, joyful smile and your little eyes get all squishy like a china doll. :)
You also are the best little laugher I've ever known. Your smiles and laughs make me the happiest mama in the world. I will stop anything I'm doing, anyone I'm talking to just to hear your sweet little baby laugh. You love mommy's funny faces and tickles and you laugh so hard when we play peekaboo! ;)
You are our sweet little angel. You are so perfect right now, so innocent, so joyful and happy. Your Daddy and I are constantly in awe by your sweet, most beautiful baby face. We cannot stop saying how cute you are and that there cannot possibly be any other baby on the face of the earth that is cuter. We simply do not believe it is possible. We cannot even believe that we, (And God) made you! I mean, we believe it of course, but it's so so surreal, still.
You are our little sunshine and you make our lives so much more exciting, fun and filled with more love than we could have ever imagined. Our whole purpose has drastically shifted from focusing on ourselves, to now focusing on what we can do to make YOU happy. We love you little Aiden. Thank you for being our baby boy!

More pics from the Marin Headlands on the Coast

Tourists In Our Own State!

There are still so many cool places that we, as native Californians have not been to! I guess both of our families growing up stuck to the favorite vacation spots they knew and left it at that as far as exploring CA went.
One of the places Tim and I have never been is Sausalito and the Marin Headlands. We decided to take a day trip there 2 weekends ago. It is only about an hour and a half drive from our home in Brentwood! Sausalito is a BEAUTIFUL, picturesque little town on the northern peninsula of the SF bay. The main street lines the water with cute little shops and restaurants and looks over the bay into the city. It was the perfect place to spend our Saturday, checking out the $10 zillion dollar yachts on the marina, having a yummy burger fresh off the grill at Bridgeway Hamburgers, and window shopping in all the unique shops that only celebrities can afford. :)

Our Weekend

Grandma and Grandpa Bishop came to visit us along with Auntie Mer, Auntie Lucy and Uncle Willy from Turlock! It was fun giving the grand tour of our new home and Aiden was excited to see his family! Saturday was busy with cooking for our guests and making baby food in bulk at the same time for Aiden. Sunday was a more realxing day as we attempted to take some family portraits in our neighborhood park, did a bit of shopping but mostly just stayed in and played with Aiden. We are also enjoying using our hottub as often as we can which is harder than we thought with a baby. :)

A New Blog!

Check it out and let me know what you think! This one is focused on everything baby and mama!
http://blissedoutbaby.blogspot.com/

Summer '09

Our little family has been quite busy this summer! We began in late May with Aiden's first airplane ride up to Portland, Oregon to visit our family. We sure had a lot of fun catching up with all our relatives and Aiden got to meet his Great Grandparents, Aunt Tenille, cousin Mason and many others for the first time.
We have also been working on house projects on the weekends, setting up our new home and unpacking still! We have come a long way since we moved in March but still have a long way to go with a the decorating and landscaping we hope to do.
In July, we spent two weeks on our annual Tahoe vacation at the cabin near Camp Richardson. Lots of family, good food, swimming, riding our waverunner, boating, wake-skating, hiking and of course some shopping too! :) Aiden did some splashing in the baby pool with his cousin Mason and learned to hold his breath underwater! Aiden also made friends with his first pet-a tree frog and gave us all his first laugh too!
When we arrived back form our Tahoe trip, my sister Melissa had her baby Emma Sophia! Mommy, Daddy and Emma are are doing well and are busy moving into their new home in Roseville too! Aiden is very excited to play with his new cousin!
Now that we are home again we are getting ready for some more upcoming trips this month! Aiden and I will be spending a week in Roseville helping out my sister as she adjusts to new baby and a new home. Then we have Tim's alumni water polo game in Turlock and a trip up to our family's cabin near Pinecrest Lake near the end of the month. We're hoping to get a baby hiker-carrier by then and bring Aiden on his first hike near the lake.
Maybe we'll stay home the month of September...or maybe not! :)

A New Home and New baby all in one month!

Oh it's been a while blogging world! But we have obviously been soooo busy with all of our new and exciting adjustments around here! We finally moved into our new house the day after our big baby shower! Thank you all who attended and shared in our special time with us and thank you so much for being so generous with all the adorable baby gifts Aiden received! It sure was a busy weekend March 14-15! Baby was due on April 12th, but he decided to grace us with his presence only 2 weeks after we moved in, on April 3 at 10:55pm. When my water broke all over our bathroom floor at 3:30am, my first thought was, "Oh my gosh the nursery isn't even set up yet!" I soon realized it didn't even matter and our family was there to help thank goodness! We calmly gathered our hospital bags, last minute food, and our famous media bag and headed to John Muir Hospital in Walnut Creek- about a 45 minute drive. So labor went well, I was very calm the whole way because that's what I had set my mind to be that day. My contractions were so much more painful than I could ever imagine with intense back labor. Tim was an awesome helper, always right there, honoring each and every one of my requests throughout the day and night. Requests like turing up the AC so that the room was a comfortable 40 degrees! (I was so hot during labor, so hot!) I learned later that some nurses were arguing over who had to go be in my, "ice-box" room. LOL My mom, mother-in-law Neva, and my sister Melissa, (who is also pregnant with a girl due in July) were also in attendance, (wearing snowjackets) and wonderful helpers as well. Long before my birthing day, probably when I read my first birth story on the empowered birth website, I decided I wanted an all natural birth. Or maybe it was the influence of my Birthing From Within book which was my other "birthing bible". Many of my friends would say, "Are you crazy?" and carry on as such. But that's just another product of our over-medicated society! Do they not realize that there was a time when people had to go through life's hardships and pain without medication? And birthing is a natural event, it's not like I refused chemo or something! God will give you the strength to handle it, all you have to do is ask and believe. Simple really. That's all I did for 22 hours of labor. I trusted my body to do it's thing and was comforted by the fact that this was the safest, most natural and beautiful way to bring little Aiden into this world. I did it for love. I did it because I wanted to feel everything. I wanted to remember and be 100% coherent for the most incredible thing my body will ever do forever. Weird? Nah, just one who embraces all the intensities this life has to offer, unafraid to face them head-on and knowing that whatever doesn't kill me will just make me rock more! :) I think of it as somewhat of a rite of passage into motherhood. Being a mother is the most loving thing you can accomplish on this earth I know now. There is nothing in life that compares to the side of love that motherhood brings about in a person.
Anyways-that's a whole other blog posting :) I am rambling. Back to the birth...So a hot shower made me dilate from a 4 to a 7 so halleluiah for showers in labor! And hypno-birthing cd's. I am a big fan of Belleruth Naparstek's hypnotherapy cd's, they have helped in other areas of my life in the past so I thought why not try her lovely hypnotizing effects in order to accomplish my goal of a natural birth. Worked like a charm. Got into my calm zone from the first contraction all the way through until Aiden popped out! Eyes closed, low mono-tone voice making one-word requests throughout the day. Very serene, centered and drifting to a place in my mind that only I was allowed to enter, shutting out the institutional surroundings of the hospital and my birth team unless I needed them :) I highly recommend it!
Aiden Sam arrived at last and we were so blessed! So healthy, beautiful with not one newborn flaw. Amazing.
He is now almost 3 months old! People are right when they say your kids will grow up in the blink of an eye! The past 3 months of being new parents has been filled with the more joy than we could ever imagine. Everything is exciting and new like falling in love for the first time, but time that by 1,000! Everything is also a disorganized, sleep-deprived, blur but a happy blur. Here's bits and pieces of the blur broken down-Stayed up worried for the first two nights just to watch him breathe, had family and friends in and out of the house constantly first 2 weeks, became a hermit for the first couple weeks and forgetting what a hairdryer or make-up was, took Aiden to doctor, Dr. said Aiden was fine and told US to chill out and not to worry so much, (new babies are scary until the first week is over), had the house rigged with walkie-talkies to communicate my and Aiden's needs efficiently :), learned what 9 hours of sleep for an entire week felt like, took Aiden on first outing to Target all bundled like an eskimo so no one would breathe on him in 80 degree weather, survived the dreadful circumcision with my ear pressed against the operating room door because Dr. didn't allow mothers in, (they all laughed when they opened the door and I practically fell into the room instead of waiting in the waiting room like all the other sane mothers), took Aiden to the U-pick farm for strawberries but only had time for cute pictures before it was time to go home and feed, took him to visit the grandparents in Turlock and Sacramento for mother's day and got my first mother's day card made out of construction paper by Aiden and Daddy-so cute, took the little guy on his first airplane ride up to Oregon to visit more family and played around in downtown Portland, learned how to cook dinner and hold a baby at the same time, and fell in love with my husband all over again when I see him with the beautiful little product of our love, singing to him and connecting with him in a way that only they will share. Life's been good to us.

You don't even know...

How long I have waited for the right time to have my own child. Ever since I can remember, I have had a fascination with babies and children. Many of my own 2 year old baby photos show me playing with dolls. The only thing I wanted for my 4th birthday were real disposable diapers for my cabbage patch dolls and my baby alive. The fake doll diapers wouldn't cut it because they couldn't get soiled and I wanted the real thing. You see, along with the real baby diapers, I used to sneak my baby sister's rice cereal, carefully mix it with the right amount of water and feed it to my baby alive doll. So in addition to needing diapers, I got wipes too for the endless amounts of rice cereal just spilling out of my doll :) The fake baby food that came with baby alive was in gel packets in bright colors. Those just wouldn't do for me either! Why would I feed my baby anything synthetic? Duh! I secretly played with dolls throughout junior high, but by high school I knew it was time to say goodbye. Sadly I packed them up and then began what I like to refer to as, " my dark years." It was the lack of dolls around I think. :)
I used to also keep the JC Penny catalogue in my room so I could look through the nursery section longingly, planning what I wanted my own baby's nursery to look like someday. I've had this all figured out since the tender age of 8, no joke. I also signed myself up for some free diaper sample offer one time and in addition to the free pamper I got in the mail, I got a free subscription to Parents Magazine from the time I was 8 years old until just a few years ago. It mysteriously followed me to all my different addresses throughout the years too! I read that magazine with as much or more importance than my schoolbooks. By the time I was 14, I knew plenty of good discipline tactics, developmental milestones to watch for, and what the best baby products were! In all the sentimental ads in the magazine with the mother and her baby, I would imagine my face holding my baby. :) Just a couple of years ago when the magazine sent me a letter stating that they had not received a payment for the last year's subscription and that they were going to cancel my subscription, I laughed! Little did they realize they had been providing a very young future mommy with a free subscription for nearly 16 years!!! Ha! No big deal, I thought. I renewed it even though at that time it would still be a few years before we would start trying for our baby. :)
By the time I turned 11, I had already completed the American Red Cross Babysitting course and had printed out professional looking fliers to post around my neighborhood so I could start my own business. It was what felt like my "big break" at the time! Finally I could have the kids all to myself and not just help my mom when she would watch kids in our home :) I was in 7th heaven, plus all the families I sat for had well stocked kitchen pantries! :)
I have always loved and worked with kids, for fun and for my career that will be put on hold for a while so I can give every ounce of my energy, excitement and love to my own kids at home. I am overjoyed that this time that I had been envisioning my whole life is finally just 8 weeks around the corner. I can't believe it is really here! I feel so lucky to also have chosen a husband with the same values as myself, (not to mention a job in these tough economic times that can provide) who wants a wife that gets complete fulfillment out of serving our family and raising our children. It is easy to get caught in the money trap of thinking we need more, more, more thinking that we cannot sacrifice having an exotic vacation, a Lexus, a Gucci purse, a mansion in the most expensive part of town in exchange for the precious time that we will never get back with our little ones. Our goal is to live as simply as possible to make this happen as well as myself working from home as much as I can.~ Our kids will remember most the time we spent watching them play soccer, not the car that they rode in to get to the game. ~

My Farewell To Gypsy Life!

I wrote this awhile back when I was completely frusterated with our life :) The picture of Tim working on his phone with our stuff packed getting ready to get on the road somewhere was a typical weekly scene from our life. NO MORE!!!!! We are not going ANYWHERE anymore! You want to see us, come visit! I'll get the guest room all ready for you! :)

You haven't used a dresser drawer in more than 6 months. A suitcase is your only choice.

You have all your favorite restaurants programmed into your phone between destinations and the to go person knows you by name at each.

You pack clothes, toiletries, media bag, and your staple food stash at least twice a week.

Your SUV is not just a mode of transportation anymore. It's a closet, a pantry, a library, a medicine cabinet and a refrigerator all in one.

You seem to get a lot of unwanted job offers from professional moving companies.

You haven't spent a full day alone with your husband in a month because you are always at peoples houses.

You have 3 kitchens and their contents memorized along with 3 TV remotes.

You never can seem to remember your zipcode when asked.

Before you go to bed at night you place a sign by your bed with the name of the city you are in that day so that you are not too disoriented upon awakening.

You are 3 1/2 months away from giving birth and you have no idea at which hospital this will happen. So add your hospital bag to the car and plan out 3 possible routes to potential hospitals from 3 different destinations.

You forgot what a routine feels like.

Magazines have just stopped sending you issues because you have changed your address too many times in the past year.

You can't remember the last time you got to buy a full size beauty product. All yours must be travel sizes.

Costco shopping is a thing of the past

If stranded in a snowstorm your loved ones could be comforted by the fact that you could survive up to a week in your SUV/storage unit on wheels!

30 weeks prego and we FINALLY have a home!!!!!!

It is official! After nearly 2 years since we moved back to California from Wyoming, we will finally have a home again!!!! Our offer just got accepted on a cute house in Brentwood, (which is in the East Bay area close to Mt. Diablo) Oh to have a house again! A yard and my very own patch of grass! Oh how I've missed grass! I will roll around in it so happily when we move in! :) No more temporary condo, apartment, a month's stay with the in-law's or another few months stay with a friend. No more gypsy life for us! Goodbye weekly road trips "home" to Turlock, packing up the 4-runner almost every Friday afternoon for the past couple years. No more occasional 2 hour monday morning commutes at 4 am in Bay area traffic for poor Tim! No more dining while driving, fumbling around trying not to spill food everywhere! No more living out of a suitcase! I get to actually fold my clothes, not make them into fruit rolls ups! :) I'll actually know where all our things are again instead of spread out among 3 different houses as they are currently. Here come the clear, plastic bins and label gun-watch out! We cannot wait! We have had to have patience if steel in the current housing market. Sure houses are selling, but what the news is leaving out is that there are some serious bidding wars going on! We got outbid on 4 other houses before this one. Each house had like 6-10 offers on each!!!! It's crazy out there! We had to bid $28,000 OVER asking price to get the house we did! Whew! Our prayers have been answered and we will hopefully be moving into our new home before the 1st of March!!! Our baby boy will have a painted nursery all set up after all! We are sooooo thankful!
So only 10 more weeks until baby is coming! We have 3 names picked out but can't decide so we will wait until we meet him for the first time and decide then I think! I can't believe how fast pregnancy flies by! I haven't even finished registering and the baby shower my mom is planning is just around the corner! (March 14) Here are some updated pics of the belli and the house!

*Palm trees in front will be ripped out ASAP! They totally block the whole front of the house!
http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/3109-Mills-Dr-Brentwood-CA-94513/54624270_zpid/