One, Two, Skip a Few

As you may notice, I have not updated this blog in about a year... That is due to a myriad of reasons, some being that we moved, built a new house, I had a child and a job I was dealing with, I live in the country and have spotty internet service, data limits....etc, etc, etc. BUT, if you are still interested in the Spencer Family, I have started a new blog that focuses more on my kitchen (aka Pinterest Addiction) with a sprinkling of our daily lives mixed in. That blog is also seldom updated (see aforementioned list of excuses),but I'm working on it. So, show me some grace, and visit the new blog at http://pinteresttestkitchen.blogspot.com/. I promise to update at least once a year.

2 months

I'm a little late on this but wanted to post Becton's 2 month photo- obviously he's started smiling... And it's the best thing ever.

8 Week Updates

So the past four weeks have been pretty eventful and a blur all at the same time!! Since my Easter post, William and I celebrated our third anniversary, shipped our dogs off for a two-month hunting training session, celebrated my first mother's day, and Becton has gained at least a few pounds, started smiling at us and is sleeping "through the night!"
I'm usually pretty wordy on my blog, but I'll keep it short this time and just post some of my favorite pictures of the happenings of the last month. I will say that on one hand, I can't believe my little baby boy is almost two months old but on the other hand, I really feel like Little Man has been a part of my life forever. I actually understand when parents talk about not remembering what they did before they had kids...and I'm only 8 weeks in people. He is the greatest blessing that God has ever given me for sure and William and I are loving (almost) every minute of being parents.

Sort of smiling in his monkey hat!

Striking a pose in his "big boy pants"

Such a ladies man...this is one of my favorite photos

William and I on our first night out since Becton was born. We went to Blue Fish to celebrate our third anniversary...but who wants to see pictures of us...back to the baby...

One of my favorite pictures- William saw this and said it looked like our son would really enjoy floating the river someday...I'm thinking some family river trips are in our future :)

Hanging with Uncle Matt

Another milestone that occurred, the Kvasnicka's are officially Texas residents again! They stopped by Dallas on their way to Austin so that Becton could meet his good friend Logan (who is 6 weeks older than him) and they could both tell their future girlfriends/wives (Libby Shulze and baby Carby) to hurry up and come out and meet us all! We are so blessed that some of our best friends are having babies so close to the same time as us!! I can't wait for our kids to look back at these pictures and joke about being "friends since before they were born." I have a friend like that (shout out Jeana) and it is such a special relationship! My prayer is that theirs would be also!

Easter Bunny Baby

For Becton's first Easter, we were still a little young to head to church so we spent the morning watching Easter services on TV and then headed out for a little Easter lunch at our home group leader's house. Becton slept the whole time in his car seat so we didn't get to show off his cute outfit but I did get a few pics before we left the house. It said "my first Easter" on the front and had cute bunny feet and a little tail.

We also took newborn pictures this week and I can't wait to see how they turn out! I'll definitely post a few when we get them!

Becton’s Birthday

Where to even begin…William Becton Spencer was born Tuesday, March 20 at 6:39pm at 7lbs, 6oz and 20 inches long…and our lives will never be the same again!

Because I had been showing some advanced pre-labor progress in my check ups for a few weeks, we decided with our Doctor to go ahead and schedule an induction for Tuesday the 20th to get baby Becton here! No one really thought I would actually make it to induction day but come Monday night, little man was still holding out so we went ahead and started preparing to go to the hospital the next morning.

We were told to report at 7am on Tuesday…and just for future records it was POURING rain all night and when we left the house. A bunch of stop lights were down from the storm so traffic was terrible and we actually ended up arriving at the hospital a little late.

After getting checked in, they took us back and got us all settled into to the labor and delivery room where we would wait for labor to progress and Becton to arrive. The day was full of anticipation and around 6pm the nurse told us we were ready to start pushing. Before we knew it, our baby had officially entered the world.

This last week and few days has been filled with so many emotions and events that I don’t know how to process it all or put it into words. We are more in love with this little guy than we could have ever imagined before his birth. I simultaneously want to laugh and cry with happiness every time I look at him and I love watching William with him and seeing him really embrace being a Dad. There are definitely times that are tough, but looking at his sweet face makes all the struggles, tiredness, pain etc seem insignificant. Here are some of my favorite pictures of the last 9 days…
Family photo before we head to the hospital

Our first family photo

Getting ready to go home from the hospital
Cuddling with Uncle Matt

Snuggled up after his first bath

Saturday morning snuggle time on Dad's chest...this outfit earned him the nickname "Frog Man" with dad.

Nursery Tour

So our little man will be here on Tuesday if not before so I thought it was time to post some nursery pics before things get too wild around here. You might notice some changes from my preview photos since this is the new room in the new house!

The wooden barn doors are my favorite part for sure. We are just missing the cute quilt that my mom made for Becton so I'll have to post pics of that when she gets in town.

Major Updates

If you’ve done the math, you know that baby Spencer is coming any day now so I thought I better do a quick update or I may not get around to it for awhile.

Pregnancy Update-
I’m technically 38 weeks and 2 days pregnant which would normally mean I’m about 12 days from actually being due but I have been progressing pretty rapidly and am already 4cm dilated and 80% effaced which is usually the point in labor where you get admitted to the hospital. I’m only missing some contractions at this point and I’m waiting for those to start up at any moment. If our little man has not decided to come on his own before this coming Tuesday, we are scheduled to induce. That means we are no more than 5-6 days away from meeting little William Becton Spencer! I can’t wait and am going to start trying some of the tricks of the trade to get labor moving on its own before the Tuesday induction deadline.

Oh yeah…and we moved…

So a few weeks ago, we actually did a super quick move back down into Dallas near White Rock Lake. We had a couple who had been interested in purchasing our house and William’s old house that we’ve had as a rental was sitting vacant so we decided to go ahead and clear one mortgage and move down to the rental property. Seeing that I was almost 9 months pregnant at the time of this move, I wasn’t really able to participate in much of the packing/lifting/unpacking/moving activites. Thankfully, we have AMAZING friends and our home group community pretty much got us packed and moved in a matter of a few days. We are completely settled into our new home now and the nursery is 100% ready for our little man to come home (I’ll post some pics when I decide to stop being lazy and take some). I really like our new place and it was actually the house we originally planned to live in when we first got married (until we stumbled upon our Richardson place). The thing I miss most about our other house is definitely the backyard. The dogs are having a bit of a hard time adjusting to their new (MUCH smaller) space but they will survive.

Since my last post I also had 2 amazing baby showers, one with family and one with friends, and am waiting for some pictures back to post on that fun-ness!! Thanks to all who were involved in helping shower me with love and get prepared for Becton’s arrival! Hopefully, this will be my last post before little man makes his debut into this world. I’ll keep you posted!

Nursery Beginnings

I’m about a week late on this post but I didn’t want to overwhelm “my readers” by posting more than one blog in a week…not so much my style.
The weekend after my birthday, I went to my first “pinterest party” where everyone chooses a fun craft or project from pinterest and you get together and try it out. We did a couple projects but the big one was making wooden signs by transferring ink from printed paper to wood. I got ambitious and put a scripture on 3 pieces of wood for the nursery. If you’re interested, we used this tutorial and it worked well when the letters were printed in bold with a new ink cartridge. We also ended up painting back over the letters with diluted black paint to make them a little darker- here’s the finished product.


The big news happened when I got home from my pinterest party. I walked in the house and heard William call me from upstairs. His mom and stepdad were also in town and he told me they were looking at some of the baby gifts in our future nursery room. When I walked in, the room that had contained nothing but a pile of clothes to be donated and few baby gifts had been turned into the beginnings of an amazing nursery!! William had been coordinating this for awhile as a birthday surprise and I could not have been more thrilled at what I found. The crib was in place (an early shower gift from his mom and stepdad) and we had a glider and ottoman (birthday gift from hubby and baby gift from his dad), AND he had worked with friends to build the “barn door” crib backdrop that I wanted (originally inspired by this pic on pinterest). I felt so relieved to have some of the big stuff knocked out for the nursery!!



The "W" stands for William as the official name of our little man is William Becton Spencer. He will go by Becton, but had to give a nod to daddy's little namesake...

I LOVED the barn door backdrop but we wanted it to look a little more "rustic" and like we used aged wood. We were going to try and find a stain that we could apply to give us this look but after trying a few things, we still weren't getting that "old wood" look. I found this tutorial on pinterest on how to make old wood new...the results are below and it really worked! If you ever want to create something "aged" looking, I highly recommend this process.





Our final project of the weekend was refinishing the dresser for little man’s room. I was pretty proud of us for making this so cute! Below are the before and after pics of our project…. I also found some cute hardware I liked at Anthropologie, but it was about $14 per handle so I bought some cheap ones at Lowe’s and created the look myself by wrapping them in twine. I think it turned out great!

Dresser Before


Dresser After


Handles Before



Handles After


So- after our SUPER crafty and pinterest project filled weekend, I am feeling much better about the progress of our nursery for baby Becton! There is still work to do so I will post some final nursery photos down the road...

The countdown is on...only six weeks until our little man makes his entrance into the world...We can't wait...or breathe...or sleep...or eat without getting heartburn...

32 weeks…and 28 years

I’m not even going to acknowledge the fact that I haven’t posted in two months. So, this is me, officially NOT acknowledging the lack of posting.

Last week marked a couple milestones in our lives. I hit the 32 week mark of my pregnancy- which officially means we have 8 WEEKS left until our little man makes his debut in the world. I have so many different and conflicting emotions about this fact that I don’t think I know how to put them all into words. I’m excited to meet my son, see who he looks like, cuddle the cuteness that I know he will be, feel that feeling they say you can only experience with the birth of your first child…scared that labor and delivery will be horrendous, that he won’t eat, that he won’t sleep, that he might not be healthy…this second list is being committed to prayer DAILY and I’m reading lots of scripture where God tells us not to be anxious/scared/fearful. I trust Him. This baby is in His hands. So that’s an inside look at my daily thoughts right now :)

I’m also feeling some other emotions, mainly related to my size. Words to describe these feelings include large, huge, big, swollen, puffy, gigantic, waddle-y, mega-sized etc. You get the picture. I don’t feel as bad about it until I see a picture of myself and realize that even my face looks different…but such is pregnancy and a small price to pay for the blessing of children (so I keep reminding myself). Here’s a picture at 32 weeks so you can see what I’m talking about.



ALSO- my 28th birthday was last week!! This is the first time since I moved to Dallas that I have not been out of town for work on my birthday so it was nice to get to spend it with William and celebrate with a few friends. The actual day was Wednesday and William sent me some awesome flowers and took me to eat at our favorite Mexican food restaurant in Richardson (Frankie’s…you should go there). Friday night, we celebrated with a small gathering of friends with dinner at La Duni. I’ve been craving their Quattro Leches Cake since I had some at a party in early December. Let me just tell you, it did not disappoint! Some of my favorite pics from the night are below.

Celebrating with great friends!


John& Julia

Adam & Chelsea got a sitter and spent their first night out since baby O was born with us... unfortunately this is the only picture that William captured.


Hubs and me- he put this whole thing together


The Girls (minus Julia and Chelsea)


Me, Katie and Lindsay- this photo was supposed to show the baby bumps but for some reason William decided to only take our faces...someone send me the bump pic if your husband understood the concept and got the bellies in the picture.


Teaser- William surprised me by knocking out some major nursery progress for my birthday. I’ll post some pics and details in the next few days.

23 Weeks

This past weekend, we had a wedding to attend, which of course meant dressing in something other than maternity jeans or yoga pants. I haven't really purchased any "maternity dresses" so far as I've been able to make some of my looser fitting/shift style dresses work with the growing belly. I had thought about what I was going to wear in advance, but Saturday morning I got out the dress I thought would be perfect (empire waist, winter-y black dress) and decided to try it on.

I was able to get it on and with William's help, it even zipped!! I thought I'd found the perfect attire for the evening until I went upstairs to take it off. It was a little tight in the top but after about 5 minutes of trying to get the side zipper undone myself, I had to call in reinforcements. It took William about 10 minutes to get me out of the dress, and at some point during that fun I decided I would not be putting that dress on again. I went back to a tried and true loose fitting shift that I had worn to another wedding a few weeks earlier- luckily it still fit but I think we are nearing it's limit for maternity wear as it keeps getting shorter and shorter in the front :)

So, since I was all dressed up, I decided to actually take a "belly" picture to send to my parents. Here I am at 23 weeks.

Nursery Lust

Since I have officially known that baby Spencer is of the male persuasion for a week now, I have of course come across some baby boy items that I'm dying to have for him and his nursery. You've seen my nursery inspiration from the previous post- I'm obsessed with the "vintage farm/modern design" of this room and am thinking I want to go with that theme.

These are a few of my favorite things...


This crib... doesn't it look just like the one in my dream nursery...AND, plus of all pluses- it's from Walmart and SUPER reasonably priced. That never happens to me. I usually fall in love with something that's a ridiculous designer name brand and I could never afford (and even if I could afford it, I could never justify spending that kind of money on that thing, whatever that thing is).



I found this on pinterest but it's from an etsy store. I love the blue and orange AND the owls are not only super in style right now, but a nod to my days as a Chi Omega (often referred to as "hooters") at Baylor. Side note- I went to Baylor homecoming last weekend and I'm always surprised at how much I miss those days. Nostalgia was everywhere...



This obviously will not fit my little guy this Thanksgiving but I think it's awesome and I really need to find it for next year. How cute are the tail feathers in the back?? For your favorite little turkey :)


My parents brought me an old dresser to re-do for the baby's room. I'd like to make it look kind of like this...now I just have to figure out how to do that exactly. If you have any tips- send them my way.

Also, if you get the urge to go ahead and buy me any of these things, that'd be nice too. I'm trying to wait until after Christmas to start going nuts on my nursery/baby prep. We'll see how that works out.

It's A...

BOY!!!!!!!!It's official!! It's a boy!!

Noonday

I follow quite a few friend's blogs and really enjoy keeping up with what everyone is doing. A few months ago, I was exploring my friend Renee's blog and discovered Noonday Collections. She is a Noonday Ambassador and basically it's an organization that works with women in third world countries to create unique jewelry, home goods and accessories. The women who make the goods actually receive the proceeds when you buy things so it's a win-win for everyone.

Last week, I entered a giveaway on Renee's blog for a $50 Noonday Collections gift card and I WON!! I just placed my order and am super excited to get my trellis cuff and cubist cuff (in silver)! You should definitely check out Noonday here http://www.reneedubose.noondaycollection.com/ambassador-reneedubose.html and while you're at it, go read Renee's blog http://theduboseframe.blogspot.com/! She's super fashionable and stylish and writes great blogs!!

Thanks Renee for my fun new accessories!!

Blog Resuscitation

My blog has been more than just abandoned lately, I think it has been in a coma. I’m going to try and bring it back to life over the next few days but it’s going to take something big…

Something bigger than pics of my poor little Huck back in the cone and on kennel confinement after surgery number 2 to remove the screws and pins he had put in during surgery number one…

Something bigger than anecdotes about the hail storm that killed my beautiful yard…

Something bigger than my first ever FALL porch decorations or preparations for Baylor homecoming and a Kvasnicka baby shower…

But what could top all of that?
This is what…


An official announcement on an internet forum that there’s a baby Spencer expected to arrive March 27, 2012.

Tune in Thursday when we find out if we’ll need pink or blue soccer balls to start training for World Cup 2030.

Oh Huck!

Well, it’s been more than a month since I’ve updated this little blog site of ours so I doubt that anyone is still reading this…but in case you are, here’s the latest breaking news in the Spencer fam.

Our sweet little puppy Huck (see previous blog post) has had quite the weekend. On Sunday, we loaded up Berkley and Huck to head to our favorite little creek for some swimming and retrieving. Our two little pups really enjoy hanging their heads out the window while we’re driving and since we were only going a few blocks, we rolled down the windows (half-way) and let their ears fly. Just as we were heading through a four-way stop, we hear a thud and I see the blur of Huck’s body in the side mirror falling out of the car.

We quickly pulled over and our little man was standing in the intersection on three legs whimpering. William grabbed him and we headed back home. Since it was Sunday, we gave him some pain relievers and let him sleep it off hoping he just had a little bruised foot or something. Monday morning, we woke up and found that he was still not putting any weight on his back right leg so I called to take him into the vet to get the situation assessed.

After a long day of pain killers and xrays, we found out that Huck had broken his femur right at the hip joint- a pretty bad place for a pup to get a break. We were referred to a veterinary surgical center where they told us Huck would have to have surgery and get a screw and pins put in his leg and then go through a pretty extensive 6 week recovery process. He went in for surgery early this morning and everything went according to plan. We will get to bring him home tomorrow if everything stays on course. His leg will be in a sling for at least 2-3 weeks and he’ll have to wear a very stylish cone. We are also going to have to try and keep him “still” which is kind of a task for a 4 month old puppy!

I didn’t really realize how much I loved this little pup until yesterday when I was watching him go through so much pain. I can’t imagine how bad I’m going to be if my kids ever get hurt! I will keep this blog updated on his progress over the next few weeks but we are confident he’s going to be back to his normal puppy mischief in a matter weeks!

New News

I’ve been a bad blogger…again…and let my updates slip, but this time it’s not due to lack of subject matter, but more lack of time! Things have been busy around the Spencer house these past few weeks.

A couple weekends ago, William and I took advantage of one of our last soccer-free weekends and headed to Tyler. We talked my mom and dad into coming in from Amarillo to go with us so they could come out and take a look at our lake lot. If everything goes as planned, we will hopefully start taking some steps towards building a house out there in the next several months. There’s still a lot to do (clearing land, dredging the shore line, getting house plans drawn up) before we can take that step so our timeline is very uncertain right now but we had a great weekend getting to see ALL of both of our families.

The biggest news to come out of that weekend though was that we got to bring home our new PUPPY, a german short-haired pointer which we named Huck (short for Huckleberry). He’s quite the active little guy but also a major snuggler. Enjoy the pictures of his cuteness below…









Also, in a very unplanned random series of events, I got a new car! William and I got an offer from someone to buy my car which made us start looking around and we found a really good deal on a Toyota Sequoia. I’ve been missing the convenience of an SUV lately so I was pretty excited to make the trade…plus we actually made money of the deal and reduced my mileage significantly! I don’t have pics but it’s a white sequoia, you’ve all seen one.

In very random, non-personal news, I just learned that schools in the north don’t have names (like I went to LaMesa Elementary, Ash Sixth Grade, Coronado Seventh Grade, Estacado Eighth Grade, and Plainview High School) but are just numbered PS 167, PS 243 etc. It stands for Public School and then they are all numbered…how impersonal! No wonder some northerners seem colder than people in the south. They are conditioned that way from school age on!