In the New Year...

Over the past few months, I've taken a break from my blog. I've posted a few times, but nothing major for a while now. I've just been focusing on other things.

• I've been growing my handmade business, Fāyán Knits.
• I've been focusing on my husband and my relationships. It's really important to me to have people on my side. People I would fight for and know would fight for me should I ever need it.
• I've been focusing on rest. I've had a few warning signs lately that I need to slow down my schedule [[migraines, etc.]] I also need to learn to say "no" to things because being a people pleaser leads to nowhere good.

But, with a new year, comes new hope! I'm taking a week of rest starting Christmas Eve. During this week, I plan on actually sitting down and taking time to create a working schedule for myself. It seems like I have 3 main parts of my life right now and I can't balance them equally at all. If I'm too into keeping up house, my business and blog suffer. But these last few weeks, my sole focus has been growing Fāyán Knits, so our home and my blog have taken a back burner.

Also, I've been reading The No Brainer Blog by Hayley Morgan. I will be making a few changes to the blog and how I do things around here. This book has been so inspirational and helpful! If you have a blog, please consider hopping over and picking up a copy. It's seriously great.

So, since this will be my last post of 2012, Merry Christmas, y'all! + Happy New Year!

Catch you on the flip side!

For Those of You I Don't Have Addresses For...

_­ 2^nd Annual Josh and Jessi Spencer “Generally Around Christmas” Letter

Dear Family and Friends,

            I know what you’re thinking. “It’s not even close to Christmas anymore”. But even though we’re late, we still wanted everyone to know what we’ve been up to! This year, we really fell behind because…

WE BOUGHT A HOUSE! We’re pretty excited about it - mostly because it provides a sense of permanency (but also because we finally get to decorate a space in our own style). It all happened so fast. We started looking at houses the first week of December, and by January 7^th, we were completely moved in.  We have been fortunate in that nothing major has gone wrong so far, and we’re pleased to report that we don’t have any obnoxiously loud neighbors that we can hear fighting all the time (a recurring issue at our last two rentals). 

If you didn’t already know, Josh started his actuarial consulting job at Towers Watson in May in Bloomington, IL.  His office has four full-time employees, plus a part-time administrative assistant. He sits next to an actuary named Ji, who has the shortest name in the office. Things are as exciting as they sound. He passed three more of his exams this year, which makes him 42% done with them (there are 12 total). That is also as exciting as it sounds.

Jessi spent her time a few different ways this year. She started the year as a housewife, baker, and blogger (training-mom.blogspot.com).  Things changed around October when she was asked to nanny for a family with five children. (Don’t worry, only one of them was home all day while the rest were in school).  It proved to be a valuable learning experience because it gave her ideas of things she does and does not want to do as a parent.

            On that note, we’re pleased to announce that we have officially started the process to become foster parents!  We’re really very excited about it and can hardly wait to be able to start accepting kids.  We have had it on our hearts to adopt children; however, it turns out we aren’t old enough yet.  We therefore decided that foster parenting was our next logical step.  It has also been very helpful to learn that several families in our church (www.thejake.cc) are already foster parents, so we will have that support system built in around us throughout the process.

            If you get a chance, please visit us at the new house! We’d love to show you around, cook you dinner, and beat you at dominoes.  =] Love, The Spencer’s