Merry Christmas!

My New Pride and Joy!

Rencher Family Cabin

Island Park, Idaho

Hanging out with Grandpa Spainhower on Christmas Eve

Baby Reagan (the best baby ever)!

It has been a fabulous Christmas! Mostly it has been wonderful being with family and friends. They are so good to us! Our parents especially are amazing. Sometimes Iowa seems so far away and it just feels good to be back in Utah and Idaho.

We made it to Utah around 5:00 am on Saturday morning after driving through the night. We rode with Matt and Erin (friends we know from Iowa) and luckily the roads were great most of the way. Thanks to Matt and Erin for letting us catch a ride with them! Now we just hope we can make it back to Iowa safely on the 2nd of January.

We spent the actual holidays with my family. It was one family party after another and it was wonderful. Dad and Cathy have been working on finishing their basement and they were working until 10:00 pm the night before we got there so that we would have a place to sleep. They also let us take over their car the whole trip. Good thing they love us! Thanks Dad and Cathy for being so wonderful! The highlight of the whole adventure is we got to talk to my little brother Alan who is in Mexico on a mission right now. He sounds just like a little Mexican and happy as can be! Next Christmas he will be home...Yeah!

Nate worked on his Daddy skills over the holidays. He held baby Reagan all night long and wouldn't give her up. That is until she spit up on him. I was even more amazed when he picked up my cousin's 2 month old baby (Anya) from her baby carrier. He wouldn't share her either. This is kind of out of character for him. I guess he is realizing that ready or not baby Rencher is coming and he better be prepared!

Now I need to tell you just how good my husband and his parents are to me...I told Nate about 1-2 months ago that I really wanted to get a little piano keyboard so that I could keep practicing the piano. I have a real piano back home but it is too heavy to keep hauling around from apartment to apartment and state to state. So I took Nate to Best Buy one day to show him what I wanted, just a simple keyboard (not even a full sized one). Apparently Nate had bigger and better plans (and with the help of his parents he was able to pull them off) because on Christmas morning I woke up to a digital mini grand piano! At first I didn't know if I should believe it. I almost started crying I was so excited. This whole time Nate had me thinking we needed room in our car to bring back a baby crib not a piano. I was totally surprised! Somehow I always seem to get the better end of the deal because all Nate got was a football and a few shirts. He gave up his Christmas presents from his parents so that I could get my huge present.

We will be driving our new car back to Iowa which is very exciting!!! We picked up our new car on Christmas night in Pocatello. My parents drove us all the way up there to get it which made for a 4 hour+ round trip for them. Again, good thing they love us! We hadn't seen the car yet (Nate's brother Jarem bought it for us at the auction) so we had no idea what we had purchased. Luckily we love it. It is a Pontiac Grand Prix GT (I have to add the GT part for Nate even though I have no idea what it means). I am very happy to finally have two cars and even more excited to have at least one car that shouldn't be breaking down on us so often. No offense to the Green Ford Contour:).

We are now up at the Rencher Family Cabin in Island Park, Idaho enjoying a little R&R. We will be here to celebrate the New Year. And yes we have much to celebrate because we are so blessed!