The Bump has Emerged!!!

21 Weeks 2 Days

My belly has pretty much been in hiding thus far but when I put my workout clothes on on Tuesday my stomach was much bigger! I know it is still small but it had a major growth spurt this last week. If I keep this kind of growth up I am going to be HUGE!

Iowa Sucks!

Not everything about Iowa is bad, but for the last week it has been freezing cold. When I left my apartment this morning at 5:30am it was -12 degrees. And with the lovely windchill the temp. came in at a miserable

-23 degrees. I think we are supposed to get up to a high of 10 degrees today. By the weekend it is supposed to finally be above freezing.

Here is a little bit of random trivia for you...the coldest tempurature that has ever been recorded in a place that is inhabited by human beings is -90.4 degrees. It was somewhere in Russia. The coldest tempurature that has ever been recorded in the United States is somewhere around -70 degrees. And that was somewhere in Montana. Which is one of the many reasons we will never live in Montana (sorry Kevin and Marianne).

We are having a GIRL!!!

I am sooooo excited! I would have been just as excited if it was a boy too. I just love knowing. The ultrasound was amazing although it still doesn't feel real that there is a baby inside of me. I will try to get the pics posted but I need a scanner and don't have one today. Last night I went to bed before Nate did. When he came to bed he cuddled up next to me and said "My girls need me to hold them." It was way cute! Anyway, it is fun to be one big happy family!

By the way...I took the job. It has been keeping me busy. My phone rings all the time! I enjoy the work butI am glad it will be temporary.

Am I a bad person?...

I was made aware a few days ago that Jen the , group exercise director at Aspen (essentially my boss) was probably going to be let go. Or should we say forced to resign. Apparently the company wants her to work 40 hours in the gym instead of from home like she has been doing for the past 7 years. She has a baby and one on the way and does not want to be away from them. They also told her she was overpaid and that no one liked her. They dropped this bomb four days before Christmas. I have become quite close with Jen so we had a good long conversation about it on Sunday. On Wednesday as I was walking out of the gym Jason, one of the owner/manager guys, stopped me and basically offered me her position. It would basically be for the next three months because I too do not want to work full time once the baby comes. They told me this was okay and that I would just help them until they can find a full-time employee. The money would be great and the experience would be amazing...but am I a bad person for even considering it. The company wouldn't even be considering me if it weren't for Jen and all that she did for me. I have to make this decision asap because they want me to start Monday.

Help!

Boy or Girl?...

Only 5 more days until we find out if this little munchkin (or howerever you spell it) is a girl or a boy! I have been so excited I actually tried to move the ultrasound up a few days, but there were no appointments available:(. You can send your votes in now. The winners will receive the pride of knowing they got it right, and those of you who are wrong can buy me presents:). People keep asking if I think I know what he/she is. You know the whole mother's intuition thing...apparently I haven't quite developed that skill yet.

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!

Winter Ice Storm...

For my fellow friends of Iowa this isn't going to be the most exciting entry considering you were here to experience it for yourselves, but I wanted to share the excitement of my first ice storm with the rest of you.

Actually I think this was the second one, but I don't remember for sure. It seems we get extreme weather here all the time.

Nate didn't even try to go to school this day and luckily for him most of his classes were cancelled. They even closed down the whole school by 11:00 am. It ended up being quite a fun day because we just hung out at home together. I don't think we even attempted to go outside until 2 or 3 in the afternoon. Once we decided to venture outside it took us around 20-30 minutes just to get into our car. It was totally iced over. The ice on the windshield was so thick you couldn't even scrape at it.

Luckily we didn't get it as bad as some of the other states around us. We never lost power and were only kept inside for a short time.

The aftermath of it was actually very pretty. All of the trees looked like they were made of crystal and at night they would shimmer in the light.

After the extreme humidity when we first moved out here in August and now these crazy ice storms I don't see myself wanting to live in Iowa for the rest of our lives, but we are having fun for the time being.