Utah State Fair!

Now that I have finally updated everyone on our summer and we are well into fall, I will begin updating on our fall happenings thus far.

We went to the Utah State Fair, which we now like to call a family tradition, though we may not ever be in Utah again during the state fair. We will have to find other state fairs.

Here we are at the beginning of our fun day.

This year's butter sculpture was a bunch of animals dancing and singing. Weird and fun.

We always enjoy the animals. This is a really funny looking picture of me petting a goat. It looks like an alien trying to get away from me but in reality it was moving so I could get the best petting positions.

Corey with a ram or something.

Me petting a baby cow!

Believe it or not, there is a chicken under fall that fluff. It was the funniest chicken we had ever seen.

Last year I got to hold little piglets that were SO CUTE. Not so this year. Instead we got to see "Big Red". Here is a picture of him.

In case you can't tell how big he is, here is a picture of his own personal introductory sign that tells it all. That's right. He's MASSIVE. Pretty cool.

We are a lot of fair food too. As delicious as it is, I have to say, we still enjoy $0.89 Kong Cones from Macy's much better. Um, can we say MASSIVE (almost like Big Red, only edible) and CHEAP. So good.

We didn't ride any rides at the state fair this year becuase last year Corey nearly puked after flipping a ridiculous amount of times on a bungee ride and I am pregnant. So, rides being out, we just enjoyed the agricultural displays. Here are some veggie and fruit creations made by local kids.

Lizard eating a carrot

Alligator

Fat Lady

Frog

I have to say, Utah has some talented children.

This is me with a weirdly long vegetable of some sort.

And of course we couldn't miss out on the giant pumpkins. I had to give them a big hug because, let's face it, pumpkins are great!

And that was about it for our Utah State Fair experience. We really like the state fair. If you haven't ever been to one, go. It's great.

Me at the end of the evening.

Also, apprently Corey has never been to the circus. I mean...COREY....has never been to the circus. I don't know how that happened but I think we will have to plan that into out future because I am pretty sure he would be like a kid in a candy shop. Animals doing crazy things, motorcyclists trying to kill themselves, gymnasts doing the same. Or, on second thought, maybe I shouldn't take him. He might decide to run away with the circus.

Summertime

SO...I have had a really hard time trying to find a chance to update this blog. What with Corey giving me an endless barrage of medical school essays to edit, FAFSA applications (which are not done...I bettery hurry!), and my general tiredness that I blame on being pregnant, I just haven't gotten to it. Also, my computer is a little slow and Corey's is fast. I like to use his computer. So does he. You see the dilemma. ANYWAY, I decided that probably the best update of our summer would be to just copy and paste most of our "Gottfredson Grapevine" newsletter and then add to it with pictures and more details, so here you are:

We have had a pretty busy and fun summer this year. On Mother’s Day we discovered that we are expecting! We are so excited to be starting our family. We are having a boy which is especially exciting because it is the first grandson on both sides of our family. Grandma has also informed me that he will be the 50th member of the Gottfredson line and he will also be the very first boy to carry on the Bishop name. So our little guy is filling a big spot in our families and we are just thrilled.

On the 4th of July we went to lunch with Corey's family at Fudrucker's and ate some delicious food. It was very bright as you can see by the look on out faces here...SQUINTY!

Here I am with Cameron, John, Elaine, and Avery (Cam's little girl)

This is Corey holding Avery. She's cute. So is he.

We were also privileged to go to the Stadium of Fire (Thanks John and Elaine!) this year. It was SUPER fun but we were disappointed in Miley Cyrus. She can't sing, poor thing. And she is a very teenage performer, if you get the drift. But everything else was fantastic. The Blue Man Group was there and they were fun to watch. They were the real entertainment.

Here we are at the Stadium of Fire. What a good looking bunch.

These huge canvas words slid their way down the stands.

So I will be working on my photography skills, but here is an attempt at fireworks photos.

My family also made their way to Utah for a big family reunion and I just can't get enough of them. As you can see, my mom, Kylie, and Renae all get along swimmingly. :)Renae was a stairs master!

We went to the BYU Creamery on 9th and ate delicious ice cream.
Looks like Kylie took after her dad.

Kylie is really good at sharing. Here you go Papa!

Corey and I take credit for Renae's walking skills. We spent a lot of time walking her around at Bear Lake. See what a good Dad Corey is going to be?

Corey and I also celebrated our 2 year anniversary on July 25th. We drove up to Wyoming and stayed with my aunt there. We went boating and we also spent a day visiting Jenny Lake and then went to "Singing In the Rain" in Jackson Hole. We even ran into one of my Dad's missionaries from Fukuoka, elder Diamond, and his wife who worked at the Pink Garter Theater. We were surprised to meet them and even more surprised that E. Diamond recognized me. Overall we had a blast and really enjoyed the break.

This is Corey in front of the Grand Tetons. Aren't they just spectacular?

This is Corey on a bridge over a river that feeds Jenny Lake.

This is a water snake we saw.

This is Corey in front of Jenny Lake. Notice there are no pictures of me. We took some, but it was a particularly unflattering time in my pregnancy and I prefer not to share the pictures of exhausted me with the world.

On our way to Jackson Hole we saw 4 or 5 owls. These are just 2 of them. We had never seen owls in the wild before. We were really close and we were very excited.

In Jackson Hole we found some gummy army men. I thought it was hilarious so we had to buy some. Our teeth showed them what war was really about.

And, of course, we took our picture with the antler arch,

We also took a trip to Texas to visit my family in August. We got to spend nearly 10 whole days there and had so much fun!!! It’s always so nice to go visit family and relax. We were able to go boating there as well and do a lot of relaxing. My mom fed us like kings and we couldn’t have had more fun. If my doctor allows it, we are hoping to make another trip back in December to see Cory when he gets off his mission and spend Christmas with my family.

This is Teresa licking the leftover "sour" from sour skittles off the counter. She was convulsing and drooling. It doesn't get much better than that.

This is Kevin purposefully being a vulture while he gets his hair cut by mom. I love them both.

Corey started having trouble with headaches this summer as well. One day he went to insta-care thinking he might have a sinus infection. The doctor there thought his symptoms sounded fishy and thought he might have an aneurysm in his brain. So she sent him to get a CT scan. Nothing showed up so then she sent him to an emergency room to have a spinal tap. I left work to be with him and when we got to the next doctor they decided he didn’t need a spinal tap but recommended he get an MRI. So we thought about it forever because, as I’m sure you can imagine, these are not cheap procedures. We finally decided to have the MRI done and then promptly began to wait, and wait…….and WAIT. It was getting ridiculous at this point because Corey went into the doctor at 1:00pm and it was now 7:30pm. So we scheduled an out patient appointment. Corey felt good about not having the MRI the next day and canceled. He went, instead, to his regular doctor who diagnosed him with nothing more than migraines. He is now on some low doses of migraine medication and it seems to be helping. It was very dramatic but we are glad that things seem to be getting better now.

Corey has also spent much of the summer applying for medical schools. He has begun hearing back from schools for secondary applications which is nice to be moving just another step closer to being done. I am now spending all my evenings doing homework that I thought would end when I graduated from BYU. I edit medical school essays virtually every night. I'm not complaining though. I figure, if I never get to have a real job that has anything to do with my major, this alone will make up for it. I will take credit for getting Corey into medical school and launching his career, and our family's future. So really, my English major was even more useful than I ever imagined. ;)

As for me, I am still just working at 1-2-3 Stitch!, an online cross stitching/craft company. Other than that I am just trying to get things organized and ready for our little one. We will be staying in our one bedroom apartment until the move (hopefully) to medical school so we don’t have very much space. It’s going to take some creativity to fit everything in, but I think I have a plan to work things out. This plan involves Ikea and D.I. runs. Fancy, I know.

We have been really enjoying the recent weather here in Utah. Corey and his dad have been playing catch recently.

Here is Corey, the stud, working his throwing arm.John is WAY in the background but this is a typical game of catch for the two of them in the Bishops' GORGEOUS yard. What a view!

Corey can't wait for our boy to arrive so as soon as we received some ADORABLE outfits in the mail from our wonderful Aya (Thank you!!), Corey decided to make a doll of our little one. This is the resulting product. Not such a cute baby face, but it will do for now. He carries it from room to room sometimes and I think it's really cute. He's going to be such a good daddy.

So that about covers it for our summer. This was a super long post so sorry if you all had trouble getting through it. Maybe I will get better at posting more frequently...