Marcus Wesley Bishop

Jeff (Brent's baby brother) and Jill welcomed Marcus Wesley Bishop into the world on Wednesday, January 27th at 8:10 am. Marcus weighed 8 pounds 1 oz and he's 19 3/4" long. Let me introduce you to our newest nephew...

We've decided that Marcus has more hair than Beck does and Beck is almost 22 months old!

Jeff and Jill...the proud parents of Marcus...

Kiki is so proud of her 5th grand child...
This is Jill's mom, Jo, and this is her first grand baby.

Beck's Little Sister

On Monday, January 25th, Brent and I went to the doctor's office for a 3:00pm sonogram to find out if we are having a boy or a girl in June. The lady doing our sonogram said the baby looked great and she's 99% positive that we are having a girl. While getting the sonogram, Dr. Nivens had to leave to deliver a baby and rather than wait, I decided to go back the next morning.

Tuesday morning, Beck and I hung out and watched cartoons until it was time for me to take him to Mrs. Linda's. (He loves watching Pinky Dinky Doo and Backyardigans.) When we got to Mrs. Linda's, I took off his jacket and Mr. Mark put some Pop Tarts on the table and Beck quickly sat down and started chowing down. My appointment was at 9:00 but didn't get called back until 9:15. The nurse weighed me (only gained 1 pound; yeah!) and my blood pressure was great. Then, Dr. Nivens came in and apologized for not being there yesterday and we talked about my nausea (down to 1 pill per day). After our short conversation, she measured my belly then wanted to check the baby's heart beat. There was no heart beat and I could tell she was getting a little concerned which got me really concerned. We went to the sonogram room and immediately I could see the very, very slow heart beat which really scared me. It was only 75 beats per minute; normal heart beat should be around 120-160bpm. She kept looking at the heart beat and it got up to 166bpm which was great but she couldn't explain the slow heart beat. She said a few scary things such as, "I've never seen this before", "sometimes the baby stops growing and the heart stops beating", etc. At this point, the fear has totally set in with me and she wanted me to see the specialist we had seen before for the Down Syndrome test. Brent met me at the specialist office and at this point I was in tears.

Dr. Zaretsky told us he does around 5,000 sonograms per year and has seen this many times. He looked at the heart beat, the blood flow in the heart and measured the baby's body parts and said she looks great. She even had hick-ups which was so fun to watch. He didn't explain why it happens but the good news is that Beck's little sister is doing great.

Remodel Update...

Brent made a lot of progress on the new guest bedroom.

We now have a hallway to the pool...
This is the new wall for the new bedroom...
Beck is in training to be Daddy's Little Helper...

Even I got in on the action of pulling staples out of the wall. Probably not the safest thing a 20-week pregnant person should do but I have to contribute somehow.

Fun at the Park

On Sunday afternoon after Beck's nap, we could have walked to the park that is very close to our house but Brent was still recovering from a terrible stomach virus so we jumped in the car for a quick ride down our street. (Beck enjoyed riding in Daddy's lap!)

I love the weather in Texas...you never know what to expect.
We've seen snow, lots of ice and on January 17th, it was 70 degrees.

I snapped a few pictures of Beck having fun on the slide...Enjoy!

Check out the static!!!

Ava's 3rd Birthday

Ava is Beck's friend at Mrs. Linda's and she had a birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese. I knew Beck would have fun because he has been there once before. He had so much fun running around, throwing the skee ball and eating pizza. We know that he has a sweet tooth and have teased him about being a cookie monster. He actually had 4 pieces of chocolate chip cookie!!! As you can see from the pictures, he loved it!!!

Remodeling Again

My very talented husband has worked so hard on our house and the work he's done is simply incredible. The house looks so much better. When we moved in, we immediately started remodeling and have successfully updated the master bath and bedroom, guest bathroom, entry, Beck's room and the kitchen. Now that baby #2 will be here in June, we have decided to convert the sun room into a guest bedroom so that visitors can stay with us whenever they want (hint, hint). I'm already soliciting for help after the c-section because Beck will not understand why I can't pick him up for 6 weeks.

Step #1 - removing the ugly brown paneling from the walls...
I think Brent really enjoyed this part of the remodel.

Next steps - building a wall, replacing the back door, moving the ceiling fan to the middle of the room, scraping the ceiling, texture the walls and ceiling then painting. There could be more that I don't know about and I'll be sure to keep posting updates on our Project!

Snow in Plano

Plano is getting snow for the third time this winter and I love it (especially since I got to leave work early)! Beck loves to be outside so much that we had to snap a few shots of him in the snow. He also loves to play with the blow up Snowman and Santa.

Christmas Day

It has been a long-time tradition for all of the kids and grand kids to line up in the hallway before going into the living room to see what Santa brought. However, this year, we totally forgot to do it! We did manage to get a group picture of the grand kids with their matching pj's on. Poor Beck was so mad that we sat him down on the floor. This picture was taken in the afternoon after Brian, Katherine, Ava and Lola arrived from Ft. Worth.
Christmas morning, Noah was SO excited to see what Santa brought him especially since he received a call from Santa Christmas Eve. Both boys were thrilled to see the presents and they wanted each others gifts. At one point, Beck sat on the couch with me, waited until Noah walked away from his toy then quickly jumped off the couch and snagged the toy! It was so funny to see him in action!Even Kiki had fun with the kid's toys!So sweet...The many stockings on the mantel...just think, there will be at least 2 more by next Christmas!My very sweet sister-in-law, Jill, made sisterhood scarves for all of us (not shown - Nanny and Katherine). Each scarf was made with our favorite color and each scarf shares a common thread...I love it!All of the cousins had a blast playing together...

Thank you Wes and Kath for a very special and wonderful Christmas!