The Best December EVER!

First I have to apologize to all of my blog readers b/c I have been a terrible blogger. I haven't posted anything in forever! This holiday season has been so busy, but so much fun at the same time!

This was Lance's first Christmas with my family and it was so amazing having him here! I have been waiting to spend Christmas with Lance for 4 years & now we never have to be apart on Christmas ever again! :) Lance got to experience all of the Freede Christmas traditions like icing Sugar Cookies, going to Christmas Eve service and getting our "semi" matching Christmas pj's on Christmas eve!

I have been having such a great time having everyone in Houston & can't believe that Betho has to go back to Abilene soon! :( However, I am SOOOOO happy that all the sweets and fattening x-mas eating is coming to an end! I have eaten more sugar cookies & fudge in the past three weeks to feel a small country! It is absolutely unacceptable!

The ultimate highlight of the break however, was my wonderful friend Sara's wedding yesterday! Sara was my roommate at ACU and she was literally one of the most stunningly beautiful brides I have ever seen! She was glowing the entire day & and her wedding was so beautiful. It was in Nashville in an amazing gothic type church/cathedral"ish" building. (great description I know) I got to see a lot of old friends and it was so fun for our old college house to reunite! 1037 Griffith Road, Abilene Texas has some crazy memories! :)

Sara had been dating her husband Brandon for over 4 years and they are the world's cutest couple! I am going to post a few pics from the wedding. However, they do not do her justice at all! She looked like a supermodel! Also, a side not about Nashville. It is the most adorable quaint little place ever but it has no freeways and tons of trees! It was the first time I have felt trapped in a big city. I guess being from Texas you get used to the freeways or something. All I know is that I am a terrible driver in a town where you can't get onto the freeway.

P.S I got to see Nicole Kidman's house! Those of you who know how utterly OBSESSED I am with her can understand why that is exciting for me! I was hoping she was in the front yard doing yoga or whatever rich famous people do for fun but I was unfortunately out of luck.

It's beginning to look a lot like SUMMER!

A lot of people hate Texas weather, especially Houston weather and I can definitely see where they are coming from! However, Lance and I just spent the afternoon laying out in the sun! Although it is not very festive weather at all it was a BEAUTIFUL day! I hate humidity but I LOVE warm weather. It was about 80 degrees with no humidity and a wonderful breeze! I don't need cold weather to get into the Christmas spirit! Give the the warm weather any day!

I must say though, God needs to make up his mind about the seasons! It was 38 on Monday, about 50 on Tuesday, and about 80 today and yesterday! I just climbed into the top of our storage to get out my gloves and scarves Monday & today I got out my swim suit! Welcome to Houston I guess!

I LOVE my Twin! :)

I LOVE CHRISTMAS!!!

Mostly because everyone is together! Betho got into town a couple days ago & it is amazingly wonderful to be back in the same town together. She came over last night and we went to my favorite restaurant Chuy's and then we came back to our apartment and watched hours of Scrubs (my favorite TV show). It is wonderful having another person who is EXACTLY like you. We have the same favorite foods and like the same TV shows! After we watched tons of scrubs my sweet little husband slept on an air mattress in the living room so Betho & I could sleep in our bed. Poor...poor Lance he had to share a 620 sq ft. apartment with me & Betho's wierdness all night! But I am fairly certain he had a good time! ;)

This morning Betho came with me to school & helped me get everything together for my class Christmas party. And I must say we had the best party! I have the best parents in my class and we had a full blown Christmas feast! Betho is definitely the artistic one and she decorated my room so cute for the party! I kept telling her THEY ARE 4 THEY DON'T CARE what the room looks like for the party! Then she said Kayla the parent's aren't 4 and they do! True or not parent after parent were going on and on about how cute it was so I guess she was right!

After school we both came back to my apartment and took an amazing 2 hours nap & headed off to the galleria for hours of shopping. Again, we are exactly alike and both love just wandering around the mall occasionally stopping at Starbucks and then talking about how we should stop drinking those drinks b/c they are so bad for you. We spent about 30 minuted talking about our new "healthy lifestyles" on our way to Sonic!! Ha!

So I guess you can see that I am slightly obsessed with Betho being back in town! We had such a fun day and I have TWO WEEKS off work so I am sure we will have more fun days to come! I have the best family & I am so excited to have my first Christmas with Lance here with all of us! I really just love my life so much! I love my husband, I love my sister & I love my parents! I also have the best cousins extended family! We have the best Christmases (is that a word?). Yeah, I am pretty lucky!


I will post again soon! I am so happy that I don't have work in the morning at 7:30 I could stay on here and type all night! Haha but I promise I won't. In the spirit of the holidays I am posting some pics of X-mas from last year! I can't believe a year has past since these were taken!


Happy Wednesday!

Our 6 Months!

Tonight Lance and I celebrated our 6 month anniversary. It was actually on the 9th but we celebrated tonight. My wonderful husband took me to Brennan's and we had a LOT of delicious food! We were planning on going out after but we were both sooooo full we just came home and watched a movie!

I cannot believe we have been married for 6 months already. I really can't believe that it was almost 4 years ago when we had our first date! I cannot imagine my life without Lance and can't believe how lucky I am to have such a kind, amazing person in my life.

In honor of our 6 month anniversary I thought I would recap on what has happened in the short 6 months since we have been married. I think we have changed jobs, cities and life goals in the past 6 months more than most people do in 6 years. Here is a quick overview.

June:

* Lance and I moved to Houston from Abilene and we were both unemployed! Which was SUPER fun! We slept in every day and did whatever we wanted all day long. Not to mention Lance was still getting paid from his job that ended in May!

July-August:

* Lance becomes a Banker! We were both really excited and thought that Lance was going to love his new job in the business world! I start grad school and UH with the intention to graduate in 2009 with my masters in Speech Pathology.

September:

Lance gets certified to teach special education and switches from the wonderful world of banking to the wonderful world of teaching.

I decide to transfer to ACU in the Fall and turn in my Cougar Card and never turn back!

October:

KAYLA IS SEARCHING FOR A JOB!!

November:

I become a teacher at Westbury Christian School and begin the wonderful job of spending every day from 7:30-3:45 with 4 and 5 year olds!!

December:

Lance & I are both teachers.....who would have thought it!!??

So as you can see we have had quite an eventful 6 months! We are both very happy & settled into our new jobs! We are planning to move to Abilene in the summer for graduate school at ACU. Please be praying that Lance can find a job while I am in school. It isn't always easy to find a job in Abilene! Also pray that I will get into school! I am not too worried about it but I don't officially find out until around March. I am so blessed to have a husband that will pack up and move 400 miles so that I can go to school! I was planning on staying at UH but when we decided to both work this year and do graduate school next year Lance was more than supportive of me going to the school I really wanted to go to! He is SOOO great and would have a much easier life if he didn't have to keep up with me! I also need to give a little shout out to my parents as well who are funding me switching to a much more expensive school! Thanks Mom & Dad!! :) I have the most amazing parents in the world who give so much and never ask for anything in return! I hope I can be half as wonderful to my kids as my parents have been to me!

Alright thats all for now! I was going to take some pictures of our fun night but of course forgot my camera! Oh well! :)

Exit Stage Right

Hey everyone, Lance here. Just wanted to let y'all know, if you care, that all of my sports-related posts can be seen at thejigandtwig.blogspot.com. I'll still write in now and again, but since I mostly stick to sports, I'll be writing elsewhere. I'd like to thank the kind people at Our Happy Life for supporting me in my introduction into blogging. I realize that I've only written three entries, but I feel like a seasoned veteran at this point. It brings a tear to my eye knowing that i'll have to sign in with another password at another blog, but know that I'll always hold OHL and it's six loyal readers near and dear to my heart. You guys are the best.

5 year olds are so exhausting!!!

Don't get me wrong I love my job but I had NO idea that children so small and cute could be so incredibly, horribly hard to deal with. As many of you know I replaced a teacher at Westbury Christian School and have been teaching for about 3 weeks now.
Anyway, apparently this teacher and myself had very different methods of teaching and disciplining and the kids have decided to go CRAZY on me the past couple of days. Here is a quick overview of my day today. The morning begins with 2 children in tears because one of the other kids said "poop" and it bothered them to hear that word. Next someone gets hit in the face and more tears begin. The crying literally goes on all morning ranging from stomach aches, to missing mommies to wanting to play with the math game and not the listening game! So this puts us to about potty time and that was about the worst 15 minutes of my life! We slipped on the the water from the flooding toilet, we peed in our underwear, we spit water on the floor, we did a little more hitting, and the climax of this morning bathroom visit was walking into the boys bathroom to find ALL of the boys in the class in the same stall doing who knows what!
As we are walking back from the bathroom (me very mad b/c my very cute leggings are now very sticky from having to CRAWL on the bathroom floor to get the boys attention) I am relieved to be going back to the classroom where the kids are going to be making a Christmas snowflakes. I taught them how all snowflakes are different and then I let each of them "help" me glitter their snowflake. WORST IDEA EVER!! All 13 of my little children were covered from head to toe in silver glitter and I still have glitter stuck to my arms and legs at this very moment. It is apparently just too tempting for a 5 year old to look at a plate of glitter and not feel the need to stick their face in it!
However, the day was not all bad, I did learn some very valuable things like........
1. If you put a straw sideways into a capri-sun and then try to squeeze it into a cup the juice comes out both sides and most likely will hit you in the face!
2. If a little kid says they feel like they are going to throw up.....LISTEN!
3. Four little boys in the bathroom at one time is a terrible idea!
4. If a kid says they need to blow there nose.....they may be expecting you to hold up the kleenex while they blow into your hand! BIGGEST SHOCK EVER!!
5. Never underestimate the power of a group of thirteen 4 & 5 year olds!
All in all this wasn't the best day of my new career! However, I am going to assume it is because of the weather or Christmas or something like that! My kids have never behaved like this so I hope it was just something in the air today! I am praying that my sweet little angels will come to school tomorrow and the little monsters that took over their bodies today will stay at home!! I also had to be SOOO mean all day and it was exhausting!! Wish me luck! :)

Clean Up On Aisle BCS

I wasn't going to say anything about how off my theoretical playoff senario turned out-WV in the national championship game, whaaaaaaat!?!?-But after reading Uncle Jim's snarky comment, I feel I need to defend myself a bit, make a few picks on games that will actually happen, and hope for the best. Here it goes:

Holiday: Arizona State V Texas- ASU's passing game scares the bejeezus out of me, but other than that, I don't know much about them. If Texas is to win, they're gonna have to control the ball and protect Colt from getting knocked around too much. No idea what will happen, but obviously, I'm going with the Horns.

Cotton: Missouri V Arkansas- If Mizzou decides to show up and play to their full capability, they win, no questions asked. If not, and if DMC, and Feeeeeelixx get going, it could make for a very interesting day. Mizzou gets the nod, but not a confident one.

Sugar: Georgia V Hawaii- I picked UGA in as my hypothetical Nat'l Champ, so I won't stray here, in fact i think the 'Dawgs win and it isn't close.

Fiesta: Oklahomo V West Va- Uggh what a crapper, no way I'm picking the sooners to win, cuz i'm never rooting for them, but then it makes the Big 12 look bad to for their champ to lose to a team who just got knocked out of the National Title game by a formerly 4-7 team. Oh well, I don't root for the Big 12, (as you'll see again later) I root for the Horns, son!! I'm going with WVa, even though it may turn out to haunt me like it did in my previous post.

Rose: USC V Illinois- Really? You want me to pick the winner? I think the real question is, when does Pete Carroll pull his starters, before or after halftime?

Orange: Kansas V VaTech- Who really knows how good Kansas is? Anyone? I sure don't. I'm going with VaTech even though I don't really know too much about either team.

BCS Championship: OSU V LSU- If Texas a'int in it, I'm pulling for LSU. Ever since our family took a trip to Louisiana when I was a kid, I've always been attracted to the environment and passion around the LSU program. Plus, Les Miles might actually be crazy, like clinically insane. How can you put a price on a possible nut-job winning a National Championship two steps away from Bourbon Street? You can't, plus OSU bores me...Geaux Tigers!!

*Oh, and Jim, as you can probably see, I don't really put much faith in the Big XII. Also, DMC is the best college running back since Hersh? Really? So that whole "Williams, Ricky" era there in Austin from 1995-1998 was just a figment of my imagination, huh? Oh, to be young again...