welcome to roley city high school.

murder. murder murder. yes, we love how to host murder parties. hannah threw one that was just, oh so fun. it took place in the 50's. which just so happens to be my favorite time period. ever. shy and i have actually have been quite busy lately and put our costumes off until an hour before the party. lucky for us we happened to have all we needed stashed away in our closet. shy and i were a couple named Cal and Pris. we were the nerdy, studous pair. which i think is fitting for one of us hee hee.
the decorations were perfect and it felt like we were in a real diner, sipping coke, eating onion rings and club sandwiches. 

unfortunately i was in charge of dessert. i brought a cookie dough pie that just would't quite cook, so it was more like a soup. heaven knows i need some cooking classes. poor shyler either gets chicken and rice for dinner or pancakes. those are my two specialties. 

after four rounds of trying to figure out which one of us murdered poor Rocky Roley, we finally cast our votes and all information came to light. yes folk, it looks like i married a murderer.
shyler, or should say Cal, killed that rockstar Rocky.

spry cafe.

things have been pretty crazy as of lately. shyler and our friend tyrel and have been taking over restaurant (with the help of my brother and father in law), in salem. it used to be called simply juicy, but with many changes it is now known as spry cafe. 

restaurant (dang hard word to spell! same word i missed in the 4th grade spelling bee, always coming back to a haunt me!!) any ways, restaurant business is quite the busy beee business. we have been remodeling the cafe which really has taken weeks. my favorite part of remodel is the wood wall. we collected tons of free pallets and cut them apart to create the wall. i think it looks amazing and maybe someday, when we finally have a home to call our own, we may have a wall like it as well. 

it is a fresh cafe, everything made is homemade. you can order smoothies, wraps, salads, or street tacos. no worries, if you have a sweet tooth there are cookies, tarts and delicious matilda chocolate cake that is to die for.  sometime i feel like the chubby boy on matilda wanting a whole pan all to myself. we just had the grand opening of the cafe and the chamber of commerce came to do the ceremony where they cut the ribbon. it felt all official.

the two cute business owners together. i can't believe we have been friends for 10 years. look what can happen in ten years.  

me with my cute hubby. sometimes i go and help when things get busy, and sometimes i go to snack when things get busy because everything is tasty tasty.

 the cute girls who work for us. and my little sister is on the far left woot woot.

it has been fun to watch all of our hard work pay off and to see business double in profit. 

maybe one day harper will work at the cafe, until then bottoms up with a delicious pina colada smoothie.

Harper's blessing day (playing catch up).

yikes, it has already been two months since we blessed our sweet babe. and i feel like writing on here, so much has changed! which it has. but here is a little post to catch up on a very important day. 

on sunday march 8th we blessed harper. we waited until sick season was over before embarking her into a dangerous germ infested church building. it was such a special day and we were so happy to share it with so many loved ones.

we couldn't resist another 5 generation picture. all girls. all the time. now if i can just look as good as these ladies when i age.... here is to hoping.

harper and daddy. i am so beyond blessed to have a husband who holds the preisthood and can give us a blessing any time we wish.

harper and mama.

great great grandma and grandpa gilson. grandma had mama over with a seamstress who sewed harper a blessing dress. she had the most intricate dresses that were just absolutely beautiful, it was so hard to choose one that i liked the most. 

harper with grandma dru. if only grandma didn't live so far away. we are planning a visit in august.

harper with granny and papa. shout out thanks to my own mama, who tends harper while i am at school teaching. t minus 6 days until summer!

some of my ramblings.

this past weekend my granny and gg came down from boise to visit little harper lee.

it was one of the first times that i took harper out of the house. we have spent a lot of time at home. i have watched all of the gossip girl series, read many books and even ordered chinese food for the first time in my life. life has been so different with a little one at our house. there is no more up and leaving at the last minute, there is a giant check list of things in my mind before we leave the house....

feeding harper.

pumping.

disinfecting bottles. 

changing her diaper.

packing the diaper bag.

pumping. pumping. pumping.

it has taken me a long time to feel like i am starting to get the hang of this being a mom thing. one of the hardest things has been breastfeeding. it felt as though that was all i was doing with my day. feed her for 30 minutes, pump for 30 minutes and then an hour later repeat. always asking myself is she crying because she is hungry? gassy? poopy? oh gosh, is she hungry? i never could see how much she was eating, so i never knew how full she really was. i started exclusively pumping. it feels like her feeding time has gotten a lot quicker, and i can see exactly how much she is eating. it is going to be interesting seeing how things play out next week when i have to go back to school. that is a whole other story...trying to figure out when and where i will be able to pump. 

harper is probably one of the best babies in the world. i mean we really lucked out with a easy pregnancy, easy delivery and easy baby. she loves to cuddle. she will bury her head into your neck and fall asleep. some of her favorite past times are watching the ceiling fan and singing songs with mama. she is starting to smile, which melts my heart and she gets really excited when it is time for her diaper to be changed. her favorite place in the house right now is the changing table. seriously how cute is that?

really i think that our life can't get any better. i have an amazing husband who takes turns getting up at 2:00 in the morning to feed her (actually he lost a bet and is doing the night feedings for the next three nights in a row wahoo!) on the bright side for him, harper slept until 6:30 this morning making her sleeping through the night for two nights in a row. rrrrrrraaaaaaoooooorrrr (audience applause). 

let's keep our fingers crossed that it wasn't just a fluke.  

new born shots. as in photos.

we took harper to get her pictures taken. i made sure to feed her full so she would sleep during our session but the second we got there... bing! her eyes were wide open. luckily our photographer was a pro at snuggling the baby into a sleep and luckily she wasn't too afraid of poop. the minute we took off her diaper she happened to have a little accident all over the floor, and her mama for that matter. any ideas on breaking that habit? it seems to be one that we have developed here. but oh i love how these pictures turned out. especially the ones with her daddy. i love watching those two, there is nothing quite like it. 

the great gatsby.

our friend kaila was turning 24 so everyone decided to throw her a roaring 1920's party. 

we spent the entire day setting up shop. my mom said it was a lot of work for one dang party, but really there are no lengths the bischof's won't take to have a great party. i think party planning is our middle name.

we had to pour the martinellies just like in the movie... and it actually worked with little spillage on the table...

we had a bunch of tables with different poker games and yummy fruity chewy candies for the poker chips. i think it is probably a good thing that real gambling is frowned upon, because when i won 150 fruities while playing russian roulette it was a litte hard not to get too cocky if you know what i mean. too bad i lost a bunch later while playing black jack...

setting up all the games. yes that is a homemade russian roulette. 

i think part of my favorite part of the night was dancing to shots. i mean i love that song so much i played it at my wedding (sorry grandma haws).

although i actually never read the great gatsby, i think i would have made a pretty good flapper girl.

Harper's Birth Story.

i found out i was pregnant back in april during spring break. my mom, sister, and i went up to boise to visit family. the entire trip i was so exhausted, like the minute you wake up want to climb back in bed and never face the world kind of tired. i constantly would call home to shyler and complain how tired i was, and how i was 1000% sure i was sick with mono. he kept telling me when i got home we would go to the doctor and see what was making me so tired. on the last day of the trip my aunts got me a pregnancy test and made me take it. i went to the bathroom and did my business when the little positive sign came up. it didn't even take the entire two minutes to appear. i must have been really pregnant. all i could think was how fast we had gotten pregnant. i had only been off my birth control for 2 months. we both felt that we have had so many opportunities and privileges of amazing adventures together (knowing someone for 10 years that will happen) that we wanted to start our family. i mean i was 25 gosh dang it, i didn't want my ovaries to get dusty. i called shy and told him the news, he was so excited when i got home he had decorated the entire house in baby decorations. the joke is he decorated the entire house in blue. thinking he would have a son first. but then again i thought it would be a boy as well so the joke really was on the both of us.

my pregnancy was pretty much picture perfect. except for the fact that i felt like i had mono on steroids. it didn't help that i was teaching 6th graders and it was almost summer. the fatigue only lasted the first trimester and then i basically didn't feel pregnant until i felt her move. i never threw up during the entire pregnancy. i know girls that would probably like to punch me right about now. i had a friend who never quit throwing up throughout her pregnancy. although i did get nauseous a few times. like when i would be backing my car out of the driveway, sitting up too quickly, or the smell of pickles (which actually always makes me nauseous). when we had out ultra sound we had the technician write down what the gender was and put it in an envelope. then we had a cake baked and frosted the inside with the color of the gender. we invited out family and friends to a park and cut the cake. when i saw pink frosting i was in complete shock. i just though my entire life i would have 5 boys. don't ask me why. it's probably because i grew up with only sisters and boys are a complete mystery to me. a week before we found out what we were having, shyler told me he hoped it was a girl i think heavenly father was kind of  softening his heart to the idea. it takes a special dad to be the father of a girl. i would know because i have the best dad, and i know shyler will be just like him.

i was worried because she was due one week before christmas eve. the hospital i was delivering at wouldn't let me be induced until a week after my due date, which like i previously mentioned was christmas eve. now i don't want to sound selfish, but who wants to be in lab or on christmas eve? i decided to try everything i could to help my labor start naturally. i got pedicures, ate sicey food and booked a prenatal massage. i went in for the massage on saturday, december 13th. it was really most amazing thing. she told me i probably would feel minor contractions that day, and boy was she right. later that afternoon i started feeling contractions around 4 o clock. they started getting more consistent the later it got. around 7:00 we were timing them around 2 minutes apart, so we packed our bags and headed to the hospital. when we got there i was only dilated to a 1. the hospital policy is that they keep you for an hour and if you dilate to another centimeter they will keep you, if not they will send you home. unfortunately i didn't dilate any further so they sent us home. that night was basically hell. pardon my french. the contractions were getting really strong and so frequent i didn't sleep a wink. and the worst part was i look over at shyler sound asleep in bed. yes, the meanie in me wanted to smother him with my pillow. i couldn't make it past 9:30 before we were headed back to the hospital, this time to stay. i was now dilated to a 3. all night in pain and only 2 centimeter more dilated. the nurse kept telling me to relax, let my body do what it was supposed to do and i would dilate faster, but every time a contraction came it was so painful my whole body would tense up. congrats to those who can force their body to relax when the entire thing keeps tensing up. as soon as i got the epidural came though everything changed. bless modern medicine. in five minutes i no longer felt any pain, my body was able to relax and i went from a 3 to a 10 in a few hours. i was so nervous to push, but in the end that was the easiest part. it was so encouraging hearing the doctor and shyler say they could see a head of dark hair. i only pushed for 16 minutes before i was able to meet my sweet little baby. the nurses cleaned her up and we were able to cuddle skin to skin. it was the most magical thing i have ever experienced. she was fussy but the minute i started talking to her she completely calmed right down. she was perfect. she was born on december 14, at 4:46 pm. she weighed 7 pounds 5 ounces and was 20.5 inches long. i can't explain the feelings of becoming a mother. i am so blessed to have little harper lee. i think i am sold on this cuddle bug.