Loving the Holidays

I absolutely love the holidays!  I feel extra spoiled this holiday time because we are students and they get long Christmas holidays.  We have a full 3 week break from school.  We have been so blessed in so many ways.  I do a little bit of part time work for an HR consultant in Boise.  I had the chance to fly out early, meet her, and work with her before the holidays began.  This was a great adventure and it meant I was able to spend a few extra days with my family.

We feel very blessed with how the semester ended for Jake.  He had some very challenging classes and the Lord blessed him to be successful through all of his efforts.  But I also must admit that we have loved the fact that Jake has no classes, no tests, and no homework to do over the break.  It is truly the first break he has had since school started.  It took him a bit to learn how to relax again.  He called me from the airport and said, "I don't have to study and I don't know what to do now."  I thought it was cute as I suggested taking a nap, reading something for fun, brainstorming baby names, etc.  We have also really enjoyed having so much time together.  It is fun to be together in the same room even if we are working on different projects.

We visited the Briggs family for Christmas and loved being together with all the Briggs kids.  It has been a number of years since we were all able to get together for Christmas.  We did all sorts of fun adventures like swimming at the Y, swimming at a hot springs, sledding, soccer, basketball, and volleyball at the gym, wii fit and ping pong competitions, learning and singing a song in church, and so many fun other little events.  It was also fun to see new dynamics as Rachel was awake all night Christmas eve and...... Scott was the first one to wake up Christmas morning so excited he couldn't sleep.  Overall it was just so wonderful to spend time with loved ones.  We ate fantastic food as everyone helped cook meals.  We took fun family photos and had a baby shower to celebrate Rachel's birthday.  What could be better than to see so many friends?

We also had a chance to spend a little time with Jake's family which we loved.  We played games, cooked food, and had a fantastic baby shower which was like a ginormous family party.  It was fun because we had people from Rachel's dad's side, Rachel's mom's side, Jake's dad's side, and Jake's mom's side.  It was fun to see how we could have a big 4 family get together and it was fantastic.  It was really fun to see Jen with her fiancé and to see how excited she was when he gave her the ring. 

Rachel's tummy exploded over the break.  Okay that might not sound so good but essentially the little guy must have had a big growth spurt because my tummy popped.  It was funny that people at church hadn't noticed I was pregnant one week and then the next week they had no doubt.  It also means that my large maternity shirts are getting tight and short. :)

We also want to thank everyone for their generosity.  We recognize it is a bit difficult to have both of our birthdays, Christmas, and baby showers all in the same month but so many people were so generous and it is such a blessing for us.  I believe we have pretty much everything we will need for the arrival of our son.  Okay almost everything...  we are still working on the name :) 

We have one week to prepare for the upcoming semester and we are excited for it.  Jake has ambitious goals to arrange his summer research, shadow some doctors, apply to scholarships, and begin studying for the upcoming week so he is ahead, not behind.  I have ambitious goals to finish preparing and assembling the babies bed room and with the help of Jake, assemble some furniture from IKEA.  We were blessed to arrive home safely through the crazy weather and airport situations.  Now we are just waiting for when we can go pick up our luggage. 

Oh and we are going to experience record breaking lows for Iowa City.  It is a high of around negative 10 degrees tomorrow and with the wind chill it will feel like negative 50.  They have sent out severe weather warnings and because of it church was cut 1 hour short today so people could return before the winds were supposed to pick up.  It is crazy because I adapted to the "cold" Utah and Idaho weather so quickly and now we are back to the frozen tundra :).  We hope all of our family and friends are safe, healthy, and warm.  We love you all.