Where did 2011-2012 school year go?

Hello friends!

My last post was July 20th oops! That seems to be a theme of mine.  This year has been HUGE for changes and exciting things in the spanntastic duo house! so I'll give you a picture summary.. or attempt to try to catch you up from then!

This was in the summer 2011 at Miller Theater with friends! I love my Davie so this had to come first! :)

We made it to Waco for a Baylor football game with the Moores!  It was SO much fun seeing Robert Griffin play this year! (badaggie..)

My room for the beginning of year 3 of teaching! yikes! how have a I made it this far? 

so clean and totally does not look like that anymore! 

David flew on the company jet to the Austin office.  He was scared out of his mind! 

We went to Jacob's families farm for the weekend! 

Christmas in Cali with my husby!

We got back from Cali to find EMILY engaged!!!!

This is a part of David's MS150 journey!

Eve 6 is back in action this year!! woo hoo i'm pumped and we got to see them perform spring break in Austin at SXSW!

The Spann's and Lacy's at Emily's Wedding!! 

 Well this blog was seriously 12 days shy of exactly a year since I posted! Sheesh! Next up we're heading to Colorado next week so I hope to post about that afterwards!  I'm also finishing summer school this week! 4 more days!  It's been good to have a schedule this summer but I'm definitely ready for a few weeks off before my 4th year of teaching begins!

Love,
a now year older... Spanns

I'm Back (for now...)

Good Summerrrr!

That was supposed to be like good afternoon...good summer.. mainly because this is most likely to be my only blog this summer pah! haha i'm terrible at this hence my last blog was in February.

Anywho.. SO much has changed!

1. i LOVEEEEED my last school year. I cannot express how much I love those kids!! seriously to the end and back. The kids who needed extra help were willing and desired it which makes all the difference.


(Would love to upload pictures here of them but would also like to keep my trabajo!)

So much personality and love. My tactic for them to show their work during big tests was to encourage them to "show me the love"(showing me the love meant they would do all their work) haha they got a huge kick out of it and would even write on their tests "I'm showing you the love Mrs. Spann". Half of me wanted to move up to 4th grade just so I could have one more year with them. They were just a huge blessing to me all year and I'm sad that I didn't get to blog more about them :(

2. Spring of Weddings!!... First up my best friend from first grade!! Amanda Burton married James MacAlpine! I love them together and am so happy for her, james, and little maddison!


Memorial Day came around to bless THE WAMBRANOS!! Another best friend from Dallas/College got married! holy moly what a fun wedding and celebration!! :) I love you two!


Then my chi-o bestie KATIE WISER marrys Chase! Katie you are 100% gorgeous and i'm so blessed to have you as a friend AND to have you here in Houston! You do make Houston a happier place for me :)




3. Braid's by Blake... After malsi's weddings and for Katie's I decided to get gutsy with trying to do my own (and others) hair for Katie's wedding. Luckily Katie G was ok with it :)


And this is my new coffee friend Crystal! we are supposed to hang out one of these days... :) She was nice enough to let me experiment on her hair as well!

4. Hunaymuffins + non pastries united! These girls are absolutely beautiful and my best friends! I'm so thankful to be able to share anything with you two! LOVE YOU!


5. Still madly in love with my davie :) This is us in Colorado only a few weeks ago :) This is day 1 of beardy growing business. He still has his beardy to this day because everyone loves it.. we shall see how long it lasts!


6. COLORADO adventures - We went fishing!!! Well.. as you can see.. David went fishing in the water and I took pictures :) I do have a video of him catching a fishie but it was just a brookie so i'll remain from posting :)
EXTREME MOUNTAIN BIKING!!! ok look i know you're thinking pff, ya right. Blake has on definitely not extreme clothes and flip flops. Well let me tell you.. this was day 2 after the extremeness!! We had to ride the bikes back down to return them to the store. Anywho.. David, his dad and I went for a 4 hour mountain biking adventure. there were HUGE rocks EVERYWHERE, tree stumps, people, freezing cold water, rain, aspen trees (so pretty) and lots of complaining about my bum. I'm glad i "survived" it though and hung in there with the Spann men.


We also mainly hiked, hiked, and hiked everyday!



Day 1 we hiked through knee deep snow, in shorts. it was interesting, fun and my shins were frozen! This picture is from a hike that we got stopped by waist deep snow :( On the way down David and I decided to hold hands the whole way. It was a lot more challenging than you would think... hiking through snow, rocks, water, mud connected to someone. but we did it! woo hoo (not a huge deal haha)

7. Now it's july and i have less than a month left until Teaching year 3 begins. I'm so thankful for my job and feel blessed to have it and to be in the same school, same room, same grade. God knows where i need to be! So while i'm waiting for August i've been crafting things up with Christine and some girls from Life group. (pictures to maybe come later)

8. I'm also reading The Help. I like it a lot and just saw they're making a movie to come out August 10th about it. I shall be there :)

Terrible Bloggy

I'm a terrible blogger.

However I want to update soon, somehow!

Christine is preggo and not only that, 5 months preggo! she started a blog so it resparked my interest in trying to keep up! I also will be her professional photog so i'll need to be updating photos more regularly! I have a feeling I will be taking a GAzillion pictures of her, jacob and sweet baby boy! Yes they're having a boy! I can't wait to see him in May and then play with him ALL summer!!

I will give you a glimpse of her and da belly!



love you guys and miss you guys

Camping!!

So it's almost been a month. Only because I am so slow at uploading pictures! lo siento!

David and I went camping. He called me at 4:30 on a friday and said.. "HEY, want to go camping?" My response.. "...SURE!" So then we had to figure out what we needed for camping and headed on out! We went to Pace Bend State Park west of Austin. It was beautiful!!


David had to set up the tent at 11pm in the dark. Everything I tried to help with had to be redone so I was little to zero help!

We're finally finished and need to go to sleeeeep. I only brought A&M apparel for the weekend. Was not thinking about how I was going to be in Austin all weekend. oops!

I was determined to wake up for the sunrise. Here we are! After this I basically jumped out of our tent to find a bathroom. Emma however was headed straight for the lake!



Our tent all set up in daylight! Emma is such a good guard dog!



We hiked for about 2 1/2 hours in the morning! Emma could not be trusted, which explains the lease to the belt method! I do hope we do not have to do this with our kids one day; however, it is likely!



Our water well!



David makes our fire! Which we ended up eating steaks over the fire with mac n cheese and broc! yummm! We ate dinner, roasted mellows, had hot chocolate and then called it a night! We were pretty tired so went to sleep early only to wake up at 6am to make it back in time for church! No worries the sun is not up at 6 in the morning so we had to take down our tent in the dark as well! :)

Overall a really really fun weekend with the hubs. I recommend it if you don't mind sleeping outside and not exactly having a bathroom. Next camping trip.. Nov. 5-7 with our bible study group!

Till then, trying to pack our apartment in boxes for the move! only 13ish days! :)
Blake

Soccer

This morning David and I decided to go play soccer .... with Emma. Emma is superrrr fast and hungry for chasing any type of ball. Therefore soccer ball, no problem she can carry that around too!

We were basically playing keep away with her until David kicked the ball when she was coming at him full charge. Needless to say Emma took out David's knees and he flew over her onto the grass :( We will be talking to Dr. Spann later today. Hopefully everything will be ok!

Also this next Wednesday the J.R. Harris eagles will begin practice. There will be lots of running and more running! We have 6 soccer balls total. 3 for the boys team 3 for the girls. hmm.. should be interesting. Originally when they asked me how many we should get I confidently said one for each player. They laughed at me. I guess we don't have money for that. shoot. If you know of anyone who would like to donate a lot of soccer balls to my school, we'd love it!

As for the rest of the day... we'll be tailgating at the alumni shindig with the sr. Spanns at the Baylor vs. rice game! It's here at Rice which is very convenient for us! Hopefully I'll have some fun pictures from the game! Go Bears!

..and go cowboys tomorrow! (Do I care? not so much, but everyone down here is obsessed with the Texans and they are playing here tomorrow so i'm routing for the cowboys :)

Have a good weekend! :)
35 days till the move!

Cinnamon Goodness!

I have a strong obsession with cinnamon rolls and Nancy Spanns are by far my favorrrrite! I finally attempted to make them on my own last week and here is what we have..

This is the dough after all the mixing and the yeast is in there. Then I had to let it rise twice..

They ended up being more of cinnamon loafs because I didn't have the small pans for cinnamon rolls that nancy uses.


After the first rising I put the cinnamon + sugar inside and they rose again. Then we have this my final cinnamon loaf after the baking. I must say I was quite impressed with myself on the first try! They are so delicious and if you come to the horrid houston to visit the spanns ... I will be happy to make these for you :) We will have 2 extra bedrooms in about a month so please start planning the visits!! :)

Till then.. here's emmalou chasing shadows!

Neiman Marcus Cookies!

Hello friends! This by far the best cookie recipe ever!! I remember Kelly (sister) making them one time growing up and I loved them (hence they were in my wonderful tried and true recipe book) and still to this day the Spann clan (in the words of mals) lurrrves them too! So I thought I'd share the recipe with you guys! (Emily.. has your mom made them yet?)

here ya go!

eee no I did not take that picture but you know if I had it would have taken me years to get it on here so I googled one, BUT that is how they look.. basically :)

Ingredients:

1 cup butter, not margarine
2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 cup granulated sugar
12 oz chocolate chips
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp salt

4 oz grated Hershey chocolate bar
2 eggs
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla
2 and 1/2 Cups blended oatmeal (place in blender and blend until fine powder)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Cream together butter and both sugars. Add eggs and vanilla. In a separate bowl, combine flour, blended oatmeal, salt, and baking powder and soda. Add gradually to butter mixture until combined.

Add chocolate chips and grated chocolate and stir. Bake for 10 minutes.

**This recipe has been halved from the original. You can double these amounts if you want to make a TON of cookies. I only make this halved recipe and have close to 50ish cookies. The extra dough I have I put in balls and freeze them so I can make them when we want a few and they're warm and gooey :)

Enjoy!
Bakin Blake!