Christmas-Part 1

This past weekend we drove down to Temple to celebrate Christmas with my side of the family. Saturday morning we spent time hanging out, playing with Tanner, and doing a lot of relaxing. I think Brian read an entire book on Saturday! 

Once Poppa and Uncle Mark arrived from Dallas we had a fabulous lunch and then opened up gifts. Tanner was a big help this year and had a blast handing out the stockings and gifts. 

Every time he handed out a gift he would throw up his arm and say "YAY!" Let's just say that Tanner got to unwrap most of the gifts under the tree : ). Here are some of the pictures from the weekend. 

My mom got all of the boys funny boxers. Of course we had to get a picture!

Tanner got a kitchen from my parents and loved it! He played with it for the rest of the weekend and would  walk around the house pouring each of us a cup of coffee (sound effects included). 

Later that evening the boys played a few rounds of Blokus while I did a little bit of this...

Here is our Christmas 2011 family picture. Look at how red T-Man's hair looks! 

Merry Christmas from the Bailey's, O'Neal's, and Pattillo's! 

16 Week Update

How far along? 16 weeks

Heartbeat? 156 which the sonographer says is great! Honestly, I think it sounds like there is a little race horse inside of me!

Total weight gain/loss: So far I haven't gained or lost any weight. 

Maternity clothes? I am still wearing all of my normal clothes but after I have eaten 3 meals my  jeans aren't so comfortable anymore!

Sleep? This week I pulled out the big body pillow to help me practice sleeping on my side. I am a back sleeper so I need help staying on my side all night. I am sleeping great and usually don't have to get up in the middle of the night. Brian is convinced that I will never have trouble sleeping EVER since I can fall asleep anywhere, anytime! 

Movement: Not yet. The doctor said I should start to feel little flutters in the next few weeks :).

Food cravings: I haven't really craved anything yet. I am just hungry all the time!

Gender: BOY! His name is going to be Tyler Grey Pattillo. We are excited that he will have boy cousins on both sides that are all within 3 years of him. They are going to have a great time growing up together! 

Labor Signs: None

What I miss: Coke and margaritas! 

What I am looking forward to: A bigger baby bump! When I wake up in the morning I have a VERY small bump that probably no one else would notice. After I eat a big dinner I get really excited because my food/baby bump is much bigger :). I'll take what I can get at this point. I am proud of that bump! 

Well....

Happy Thanksgiving

We had a fabulous Thanksgiving break this year and I am a little sad that it is coming to an end. This year we spent Thanksgiving with my family. Thursday morning we started off by running the Turkey Trot in downtown Dallas. We met up with my parents and walked to the starting line. I think the Turkey Trot is becoming an O'Neal family tradition. This was mine and Brian's first year to do it since we were with the Pattillo's last Thanksgiving. It is a really casual race with lots of kids, strollers, and dogs participating. Here are some pictures of us walking to the race. 

After the race we headed over to Kali's house for Thanksgiving lunch followed by about 7 hours of football. We were pleased with the Cowboys performance but very sad about our Aggies loss. We had a great time hanging out with family and also took advantage of my sister's new camera lens by taking a few Christmas card pictures. :)

Tiny Prints

I am really excited that Tiny Prints is offering 50 free cards this year! I absolutely LOVE getting Christmas cards in the mail and look forward to browsing the websites to pick ours every year. After browsing through their website I found some really cute options for this year. Here are some of the ones I found.

Click here to link to the Tiny Prints website where they have lots more to choose from!

Celebrating Brian's Birthday

Brian's birthday was way back in August but we finally got to celebrate this past weekend. Brian's grandfather used to own a sail boat in the Caribbean and ever since then Brian has loved sailing. For Brian's birthday I got us a 2 hour sail boat cruise on Lake Lewisville. I know it is far from sailing in the Caribbean but it was still pretty cool. Here are some pictures from our cruise. 

2 Year Anniversary

For our 2 year anniversary Brian and I took a weekend trip to Asheville, NC. Over the last few years (and mostly because of the awful Texas heat) we have come to love the mountains. Brian took a half day on Friday so we arrived in NC around 4pm. We were hoping to escape the hot temperatures but apparently we brought them with us. While we were there the temperature got up to 95 degrees! BOO! It wasn't what we were expecting but at least the scenery was beautiful! 

Friday night we walked around and got settled into the place. We had dinner at Cedric's Tavern and then headed to the creamery. Saturday morning we took the shuttle over to the Biltmore house. It is the largest home in America and was finished in 1895. It has 4 acres of floor space, 250 rooms, 34 bedrooms, 43 bathrooms, and 65 fireplaces. The basement alone would house a swimming pool, gymnasium and changing rooms, bowling alley, servants' quarters, kitchens, and more. I felt like I was at a chateau in France! It is incredible. 

Later that day we decided to take the car and drive up the Blue Ridge Parkway. It is an incredible drive through the mountains with many places to pull over and get in some incredible pictures. That would have been great if our camera battery hadn't died on the drive up! The rest of the pictures of our trip were taken on my iPhone. That would have been fine if either Brian or I had the new version of the iPhone with the fancy camera and flash....well we don't! I tried my best to capture the scenery on my phone but many of the shots didn't turn out so great. Lesson learned....I will always have the camera battery charged before we head out on vacation! (Thanks to piknic.com my pictures don't look so bad!)

That is the best shot I got on the drive through the mountains. 

Due to a recommendation from Noelle, we headed to The Grove Inn for dinner at the Sunset Terrace. It was a perfect night. We were seated right around sunset and got to enjoy that while eating our dinner. It was a perfect way to celebrate! 

Here is a picture of the Sunset Terrace on the back side of The Grove Inn and a picture of the view from dinner.

Sunday morning we had a few hours to kill before heading back to the airport so we rented some bikes. They have lots of mountain bike trails you can explore but since we only had a few hours we just stayed on the main roads. The roads were lined with beautiful sunflowers. 

I am so thankful to have met and married such an amazing man and I look forward to the many many years ahead!

Father's Heart Sponsorship Program

Although it is hard to leave the kids in Zambia, it is comforting to know that we have the chance to still make a difference once we get back to America through finding sponsors for each child in our group.

The “Father’s Heart” sponsorship program allows you to personally sponsor kids that were in our group at Camp Life this year. The cost is $85 one time and $40/month. This money will provide 100% of the child’s education expenses, the expense of having a Zambian Family Legacy staff member disciple these kids on a weekly basis, and access to the Community Resource Center in their community. 

To show the tangible difference this makes here are two contrasting stories of kids who were in Brian's group a few years ago, Nyambe and Jackson.

Nyambe came to Camp Life in 2007 and like most everyone in Zambia, his family is extremely poor. Unfortunately I was not able to find him a sponsor in 2007 and he has not been able to go to school since then. Nyambe trusted Christ for salvation, but because he is not sponsored, he has not received continued discipleship. He is 12 years old and works every day busting up rocks to be made into cinder blocks.

Jackson also came to Camp Life for the first time in 2007. He didn’t speak any English at that time and wasn’t doing well in school. God provided a sponsor for him, and his life couldn’t be more different. He has since skipped two grades and is number one in his class. He speaks fluent English and aspires to be an accountant. He has received continued discipleship, and his biggest prayer is that he would be able to help his younger brothers and sisters get through school.

We have no intention to motivate through guilt, we only want to share with each of you a chance to use the resources God has given you to push back the darkness in Zambia. Together, we have 14 kids that need to be sponsored. Below is a collage of the 5 kids that we think are the most vulnerable. If you are interested in learning more about these kid’s stories and the possibility of sponsoring them, please email me (tayloro84@yahoo.com) or go to the Father's Heart website.

Zambia Video

Here is a short video that we made using our Zambia pictures. Enjoy!

Make sure and turn up the volume.

Meet Chamba

Chamba is a sweet girl that Brian came to know in Zambia during the summer of 2008. (That summer Brian was on summer staff with Family Legacy Missions and was able to get to know a lot of kids!)

 During the 5 days of camp each counselor is to meet one-on-one with each child in their group. That is the time where you find out some of the hardships that these kids deal with on a day to day basis. Here is Chamba's story.

"Her parents lived in separate places and she rarely saw her father. Two of her siblings have already passed away. Chamba’s mother practices witchcraft and gets drunk almost everyday. Unfortunately, Chamba suffers severely from a lack of hearing in both ears because her mother sprayed rat poison in both of them on a regular basis as a form of punishment for no reason. Sweet Chamba has suffered from evil, vivid nightmares as a result of losing her siblings and her mother practicing witchcraft over her." 

-This was taken from the Family Legacy website

After hearing about this during camp, Family Legacy did everything they could to help this sweet girl. Brian and another girl on summer staff would visit Chamba on a daily basis for a few weeks giving her shots to help with the infection in her ears. 

Here they are on one of their visits.

The summer came to an end and Brian had to come home. Brian and I were not able to go to Zambia in 2009 or 2010 and so we didn't know how Chamba was doing.  The very last day of camp after all of the campers have gone the Americans take a tour of The Tree of Life. The Tree of Life is basically an orphanage that Family Legacy has built as a safe place for kids in the worst situations to come and live. The parents must give up full custody to Family Legacy. 

Well as we were walking around Tree of Life Brian sees a little girl running towards him. That little girl was Chamba. Here is the rest of her story.

"Now at the Tree of Life Children’s Village, Chamba has a whole new family! She praises God for her regular medical treatment with her ears and we are all praying for a full healing on her behalf. Chamba wants to be a doctor when she grows up and is now well on her way to her dream!"

There are countless other stories of children living at the Tree of Life that have been rescued out of situations like Chamba's. When you read the statistics and get overwhelmed with the problem it is so encouraging to realize that these kids are being transformed....even if it is just one kid at a time! 

Here is a picture of Chamba at the Tree of Life.

If you would like to read about the other children living at the Tree of Life click here.

The next post will be about a girl named Grace. Stay tuned!

Zambia Post #1

I know we have been back for 3 weeks now and I have still not gotten around to writing about Camp Life on here. To be honest, I am finding it very hard to even know where to begin. 

Instead of trying to give every detail of every day I will just tell a few of my favorite experiences and stories. Here it goes...

This year I had a group of 10 girls ranging in age from 6-11. Here are the 10 girls that I had the privilege of spending the week with at camp.

Thursday is my favorite day of camp! Every other day of camp we have the kids bused in and do camp at a conference center type place. Many of the kids have never ridden on a bus much less leave the community they live in.  It is so sweet watching these kids experience so many "firsts".

  

Thursday is different because we get to go into the communities where these kids live. My kids were from a community called "Ngombe". They tried all week to teach me the correct way to pronounce this word....they were unsuccessful! Let's just say they laughed at me A LOT.  

This year we focused on how as believers in Jesus Christ we should love and serve our neighbors. So we put these kids to work! Once we arrived in Ngombe we split up the groups of kids into different service projects. Some of the jobs were picking up trash, cleaning the community schools, painting a local clinic/police station, walking around and evangelizing. Service projects are a foreign concept to the Zambian people. There is no "serving" your neighbor. It was so fun to have my girls walk me around their community pointing out places of significance to them. Here are some pictures of the different communities that I have been to in Zambia.

Imagine walking through these communities that are littered with trash, one room mud huts, and little kids wandering around alone. It is heart breaking. It is one thing to hear these kids talk about their living situations and all of the hard issues they have to face daily but walking through it yourself makes it all very real. 

One of the hardest realizations when you are in a country like Zambia is that the problem seems overwhelming. Here are a few statistics that will help you understand better.

* Half of the population of Zambia is under the age of 16

* Of the 6 million children in Zambia, more than 1 million of them are orphaned

* Average life expectancy is 38

* 86% of people live on less than $1 a day

When I would look at the kids sweet faces, it would break my heart to know the odds they are facing. Orphans are seen as a burden in these communities and usually neglected because of their status. But in all of this there is hope...

I will be posting a few of these amazing stories of hope soon! 

Victoria Falls

We arrived in Lusaka, Zambia on Monday, June 13th after two 10 hour flights. It was a very LONG two days of travel but we were so excited to finally be in Zambia! We went through customs and loaded a bus that would drive us 6 hours away to Livingstone where we would stay for the next 5 days. Livingstone is home to Victoria Falls which is one of the 7 Natural Wonders of the World. It was an incredible vacation! The falls is 1,708 meters wide and is referred to by Zambian's as "the smoke that thunders". 

One of our favorite things that we did was take a helicopter tour to get an ariel view of the falls. The pictures turned out amazing!

The resort we stayed in gave us access to many trails that go along the edge of the falls. The first few trails give you a beautiful view of the falls but once you cross over a small bridge the experience changes drastically. The spray from the falls is intense and we walked out soaked!

The spray is so intense in this picture that you can't even see the falls behind us.

We stayed at a resort called The Zambezi Sun that is located in a national wildlife park where zebras, monkeys, baboons, and giraffes roam freely. We met a man called Benny who had been working with the animals for years. He took us around the resort telling us about the different animals. This baby zebra was born on Christmas Day this past year.

He also took us to see a group of giraffes up close. He literally walked us to the giraffe, made some weird noises, and the giraffe bent down and allowed Benny to hold on to it's neck. Amazing!

We went on a sunset cruise and had the opportunity to relax and see the Zambezi River. It was an incredible sunset!

The last day we had the opportunity to go on the Chobi Game Safari. The first part of the safari was on a boat. We saw elephants, hippos, and crocodiles. We got so close to these animals...it was a little frightening! Here are some of the best pictures.

After a few hours on the boat we got into these really cool safari jeeps for the "on land" portion of the safari. 

Here are some of the animals that we saw on the second part of the safari.

Because we were in a jeep we were able to get very close to these wild animals. 

The guide told us that seeing a hippo walking that far away from the water was very odd. You can't tell from this picture but the hippo had a large gash across his shoulder where he had been wounded. 

We came across this pack of lionesses that were feeding on a recent kill. We drove a little farther and came across the rest of their pack. The crazy thing was that we were probably 10 yards away from these animals and the guide had the engine turned off, no weapon for protection, and there were no doors/windows on these jeeps. It was pretty scary! 

Victoria Falls was an incredible trip and we had so much fun getting to know some of the people that we would do Camp Life with the next week.