Merry Christmas...a little late!

I always look forward to Christmas, and this year it feels like it came and went very quickly. Even so, I still wanted to share a few Christmas images and thoughts.

Here are some of the decorations we put up for our first Christmas in our new home. We put up the decor on December 1st, took pictures shortly thereafter, but never posted until now. Better late than never, right?!

Our 9-foot Christmas Tree was this year's present to ourselves

This is the first posted picture of the interior of our house. More will follow soon.

Here is some of what we saw in Utah:

The lights on Temple Square

We loved visiting Temple Square with Nick's sister Emily and her family. The lights are always beautiful, but more brilliant than the lights is the great spirit of peace we felt there--the spirit that comes from thinking about Christ and what his birth really means to us.

Merry Christmas, and may we carry the spirit of the season into this New Year!

It's a Boy!

Yesterday we had our long-awaited ultrasound to find out the baby's gender. He's a he! We have had names picked out for a long time and our boy name is Brinton Nicholas Bishop, so I guess I can start using his name now. Brinton was very cute yesterday. He sort of yawned and made sleepy gestures with his little arms. It was fun to watch (not just hear) his heart beating. Being a parent is a very special blessing. Brinton already makes us very happy and he hasn't even been born!

Thanksgiving 2009

I am really enjoying school, but Thanksgiving (as always) seems like sort of a cruel teaser for the Christmas break that is right around the corner. This year we went to Henderson, NV to be with Christina's family for Thanksgiving. We have had a really great time catching up with family and enjoying the time together. Here's a picture of everyone who was there.

Many of Chrissy's siblings were with their respective in-laws this year. Thanksgiving was a little smaller and quieter, but very nice.

Here's a picture of just one of the delicious pies we devoured.

It is a perfect pecan pie, that happens to have been made by Christina! She never liked nut pie until she had my mom's walnut pie, so she made it for her family with pecans instead. Yum!

Last night we saw The Blind Side, which EVERYONE should see. It's easily the best movie I've seen in a while. Today we are going to the Las Vegas Temple and tomorrow Chrissy is singing O Holy Night in her home ward, which is a Christmas tradition for them. Tomorrow night we go back home and back to real life. I am thankful for Thanksgiving!

Introducing Bishop NH

My first scientific paper is available online at the website of the Journal of Cellular Physiology!!! Click here to see it. My name is still not showing up on PubMed (a major database of scholarly research), but I imagine that will come soon. Here's one of my favorite images from the paper:

Sperry, R.B.*, Bishop N.H.*, Bramwell, J.J., Brodeur, M.N., Carter, M.J., Fowler, B.T., Lewis, Z.T., Maxfield, S.D., Staley, D.M., Vellinga., R.M., Hansen, M.D.H. 2010. Zyxin controls migration in epithilial-mesenchymal transition by mediating actin-membrane linkages at cell-cell junctions. Journal of Cellular Physiology. Early view. Published online November 19, 2009.

*Sperry RB and Bishop NH contributed equally to this work.

Since I copied this figure from the journal webpage, and since I can, I thought I'd better be the first to cite the paper. :-)

Kantorei!

Christina and I were accepted into a local community choir called Kantorei! We are very excited and feel like everything has worked out miraculously. Both of us had been missing Singers a lot recently. A friend of mine joined a choir and was looking at her performance schedule online. I recognized Kantorei on the list of choirs singing at the same venue, because Dr. Staheli had mentioned the group when we told him we were moving to Denver. We both signed up to be notified for auditions, but didn't expect to hear anything till next season, since the only advertised openings were for second bass and first tenor.

Monday we got an e-mail announcing special auditions by invitation only. I auditioned for first tenor and Christina auditioned for an alto spot that opened up unexpectedly. We met the directors last night at our audition and were impressed with their friendliness and flexibility. Since we weren't expecting anything until August, we were worried that Chrissy's pregnancy might prevent her from performing with the group. Drs. Larson and Pohlenz assured us that many of women in the group have children. Some of them choose to keep singing and others take a break. Whatever we decide will be acceptable.

We've actually never heard the group sing, but we feel like it is a good one. Dr. Staheli did mention them, which is definitely a good sign. Several alumni of Singers have been in the group. We love the repertoire they choose. They have been invited to sing at the South West American Choral Directors Association meeting in Denver this February. And lastly, they liked us, so they must have good taste. :-)

We are very excited to be a part of a high quality choral group again and feel so blessed that everything worked out okay.

SNOWY HALLOWEEN!!!

That's right, today is a SNOW DAY! It has snowed about a foot and campus is closed as of yesterday at 1:00 pm. It may even be closed tomorrow. Here's a picture of the snow drift in front of our door before I shoveled it:

Here's the snow piled up on our newly stained deck. Glad we got it stained before the weather hit!

I am grateful for the snow. We have had fun together at home today. All the time I think of things I would like to blog about, but I don't usually find the time to do it. Perhaps someday you will get to hear my thoughts on cadaver dissection, my excitement about a lab I may rotate through, my experiences with my new clinical preceptor, or my gratitude toward our excellent ward. But not today. Instead of trying to catch up with everything, I am just going to start where I am, and cover those topics if I can.

So for the Head and Neck unit of Anatomy, several guys from class vowed not to shave their heads or necks for the three week unit and have a beard-off. Here is mine (the day after our test, with my neck shaved).

I know the toothbrushing is sort of weird, but it's the best picture I have of the beard. During the week, my beard shrank to a goatee, a mustache (for five minutes) and then to nothing in preparation for our Halloween costume: Edward and Bella from Twilight. If you look closely in the first picture, you can even see my sparkly skin.

Here's a picture of some food we brought to a Halloween party with some med school friends. There was supposed to be a contest for the spookiest food, so we brought eyeballs served on cross-sections of arms.

Also for Halloween, my parents came in town for a night and we saw Wicked downtown. It was even better than I imagined it. I'm glad they made it out of Denver before the worst of the storm.

Well, I guess that's all for now. Happy Halloween to everyone!

Vail

This weekend Chrissy and I went to a retreat in Vail for the Cell Biology, Stem Cells, and Development (CSD) Graduate Program retreat. It is beautiful there and the pictures I will post do not really do it justice. We both enjoyed the talks and I am particularly excited about potentially rotating through the lab of one of the speakers. Chrissy and I ditched one of the talks to drive up to Vail Village, which is where all the condos and shopping areas are in Vail. We had fun just walking around and enjoying the scenery.

We have also enjoyed watching the semi-annual General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints yesterday and today. Hurray for live online streaming (we don't own a TV). We missed being with our friends and family for the conference but we also enjoyed the time together.

-Nick