First Married Christmas

So Brian and I celebrated our first Christmas as a married couple. We started our first tradition on Christmas Eve morning by waking up, making pancakes, and watching a Christmas movie. This year I got to pick so we watched Home Alone. So much fun!
This Christmas we spent with Brian's family and will continue to alternate in the years to come. My family was in Dallas this year though because my sister is due to have Tanner any day now and she cant travel. This year my family decided to adopt a family through Kali and Lance's church instead of exchanging gifts. We delivered all kinds of goodies and gifts to their house on Christmas Eve. It was fun listening to their stories of where they are from (Tanzania) and their experiences in Texas. 

We spent the rest of Christmas Eve and Christmas morning with Brian's family. We had breakfast for dinner, read the Christmas story, sang songs, and watched It's A Wonderful Life. We had so much fun opening gifts together and watching Jackson experience Christmas for the first time. 

We love baby Jackson!!!!

Brian got a shotgun and a Stephen McGee Cowboys jersey.

After all of the gifts were opened and lunch was eaten, we headed over to my grandfathers to see my family for a few hours. My uncle bought these remote controlled helicopters and gave everyone their own. It was a huge hit! Brian still chases me around our apartment with that helicopter! Thanks a lot Mark!

We finished up the weekend with dinner at Mi Cocina with Charles, Jordie, Whitney, and Travis. We had a blast!! Cant wait to spend New Years with you guys. I hope we have just as much fun at the ranch as we did at dinner. haha

The girls

The boys

I couldnt have imagined a better first Christmas with my husband. I hope everyone else made as many fun memories as we did!

Cute Kindergarteners

I was watching my class during centers today and this is what I overheard.


Girl sitting in my rocking chair: "This is how Mrs. Pattillo sits in her chair." (She proceeds to cross her legs.) "I sit like this in her chair because I am not a grown up yet." (She sits with her legs straight out.)


Too cute! 

Turkey Day

Brian and I had a fabulous first Thanksgiving together as a married couple. We decided to wake up and drive to Temple on Thursday morning because Brian had to work on Wednesday and to avoid the crazy traffic! We got to Temple around 8:30am...just in time to participate in our own little Turkey Trot. Oh and dont be fooled by the pictures, Grant was not in first place the whole time...he ran ahead when he saw the camera. :) 

Dad, Brian, Me, Lance, and Grant

The rest of the afternoon was followed with food and football. I dont think I have ever sat and watched that many hours of football in my life! It was fun being with family though. Here are some of the pictures of the rest of the day.

The O'Neal's, Bailey's, and Pattillo's

I am most thankful for him :).

Over Thanksgiving, Brian was referred to as "ladder" by my mom because he is the go to guy if anything high up needs to be reached. He was standing on a step ladder helping put up the tree so I held on tight just in case he fell. After a few days in Temple, we headed back to Dallas to hang out with Brian's family. We had fun eating, playing with Jackson, and playing cards. 

 Happy Thanksgiving!

Call me crazy...

Starting around early September Brian and I started running together. Around 3 weeks after we started running I got mono and the running stopped. I have been mono free for the past month and can no longer use the "mono" excuse to get out of running. We finally got back into the routine of running and actually ran 2.65 miles on Sunday. Crazy, I know! For those of you that are thinking that is nothing, you must not know me very well. My most fond memory of my running career was in middle school when my athletic coaches thought I should be on the cross country. I was so bad and hated it so much that my coach would run next to me (as I was crying) and offer to buy me dinner if I would just pass one person. How sad is that?! 
All that to say, I have decided to run the Cowtown 10K on February 27, 2010 with Brian. If anyone is interested in joining us please let me know.

A Mislead Youth

This being my 4th year teaching kindergarten, you would think that I have tons of cute stories to tell. The sad thing is that they are so commonplace that I forget them by the end of the week. (Sad, I know!) Now that I have a blog I have a place to share those fun stories before I forget them. 
Earlier this week my class was practicing writing simple sentences. I was working through the sentence "We are at the zoo." and was asking for help from my class to spell the word "we". I called on one of my kids that is pretty smart and thought for sure the would easily be able to spell it. In the most serious face he spelled it "wii". Turns out that Nintendo is actually educational! Wow.


Then yesterday I overheard two of my kids talking about God. This is the conversation:
Girl: God is everywhere.
Boy: God lives above heaven.
Girl: No, he lives in heaven.
Me: You are right, God does live in heaven.
(Then the boy brought over a book with a map of the US, pointed to the word he saw above the US, and asked me what the name of that place is. I told him it is called Canada.)
Boy (to girl): God lives in Canada.

A Hippie Halloween

We had quite a busy Saturday this weekend. My parents were in town so my mom, Kali, and I spend the afternoon running errands and helping her finish getting things for Tanner's nursery. I cant wait for him to be born! :) Brian and I went to the 5 o'clock service at The Village and it was amazing. Matt spoke about the role of men and women in marriage. I highly recommend that you listen to the podcast! Tony Romo was there as well...3rd row center. Brian noticed right when we got there and sat down and I quickly started texting people...haha! After church we headed to a wedding shower and then to our home group Halloween party. We dressed up like hippies and had a fun time hanging out and playing the game "Loaded Questions". Here are some pictures of the fun costumes.

Red Ribbon Week

This week was Red Ribbon Week at the school I teach at. It is always interesting teaching 5 year olds about drugs! My favorite part about the week is that we get to wear fun things. Monday was twin day, Tuesday was Hawaiian day, Wednesday was jean day, Thursday was PJ day, and today was slipper and favorite team t-shirt day. My favorite day was Thursday because my kids had the cutest pj's! I couldnt believe that two of my girls showed up in fleece onesies...haha! There were a lot of Sponge Bob, Transformers, Superman, and Dora outfits. I wish I post pictures of their cute faces but I dont know how their parents would feel about me posting their kids pics on the internet :). The best I can do is to post a picture of their slippers.

We also competed in a door decorating contest. I was so excited that we tied for 2nd place. (Kindergarten never wins stuff like this because the kids dont come up with the theme, I do.) For the contest, our door theme was "I promise to be...DRUG FREE!" and each kid told me how he/she promises to do that. It was so cute because most kids promised to either not smoke cigarettes or not drink beer. Here is a picture of my door and some of their comments.

Dinner and the Drive-In

This past weekend Brian and I had so much fun spending all of Saturday with our friends Travis and Whitney. We started the day off by watching the Texas/OU game while squeezing a trip to the grocery store during half time. When the game was over we decided to enjoy the beautiful weather by heading over to a park near our apartment. We threw the football around and then the boys got out the slack line. Whitney and I attempted it but werent very successful. When the slack line came untied (while the boys were on it) we decided it was time to head back to our apartment. I cooked dinner....lets just say that I have done a better job before :).
 

After dinner we headed to Ennis to see a double feature of Where the Wild Things Are and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs at the drive in. It was so much fun pilling in the back of Travis' truck while watching the movies. I highly recommend a trip out to the drivein! Thanks Travis and Whitney, come hang out again soon.

We Got Married!

We absolutely LOVED our wedding photographer (Aves Photographic Design) and are still in awe of the amazing job they did capturing every special moment. Here are a few of my favorites.

Feel free to visit their blog at http://www.avesphotographicdesign.com!

It's about time...

I have wanted to start a blog for so long but Brian and I couldn't think of a "catchy" name for our blog. You probably already noticed that we gave up and went with the very original title of taylor and brian. Needless to say, I am super excited to start blogging about all of the fun and exciting things that are going on in our lives. I hope you enjoy!