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courtatwell
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Name: Courtenay
Gender: Female
Interests: my husband and kids, cooking, shopping, friends, entertaining, being outdoors, decorating, photographing my family, being involved at church, my kids' laughs and smiles, being the best wife and mommy I can be!
Expertise: Like most moms, I'm pretty good with diapers, homemade baby food, where to get deals on kids' clothes, and what the good shows are on Nick Jr.
Occupation: wife and mommy
Message: message me
Member Since:
11/21/2006
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| Well, it's been a long time. I've been distracted lately by a little thing called Facebook. I don't spend as much time as some people (i.e. my husband......addict), but it has been taking away from my Xanga time. It's been fun finding people on there, some that I haven't talked to in ages! A lot of them don't do Xanga, so it's fun to keep in touch with people on both.
Anyway, it's February already?? What happened to the last two months? We traveled for over two weeks for the Holidays this year......longest trip we've ever done. Seems like I'm just now getting back to the normal routine.
Lots of snow here in CO! I love the snow here. We'll get a good 6 inches, then in a couple days it's all melted, then another batch will come. So the snow always seems fresh. The kids love playing in it too, and it's a good excuse to make hot chocolate.
Carter is really starting to talk. His favorite word at the moment is "NO". Why do kids just naturally love that one?? Right now he mainly uses it on his sister when she irritates him (which is like every three minutes). Other favorites are daddy, mommy, yucky, yay, and wow.
 
morning hair favorite animals
Welp, naptime is over, so you know what that means........
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| Thanks for your votes on the gingerbread houses! The wives won! (The men are bitter.)
This weekend, we took Kylie to see the Nutcracker Ballet (which she calls "the Crackernut".... ). It was WONDERFUL! Two girls in our church are ballerinas. One of them, Emily, is still really young, but she had two parts in the ballet--a party girl, and one of the Chinese dancers. So cute! The older sister, Lacey, was really exciting because she was the Sugar Plum Fairy, which is THE coveted role of this ballet. She did a gorgeous job!! Afterwards we got to go backstage and see them, and Kylie was completely ga-ga over them.
Curtain call......Lacey is in the center with the red roses. Here's Kylie with Emily. Kylie with Lacey, the Sugar Plum Princess.  Lacey is such a sweetheart and might start teaching a ballet class to the girls in the church......Kylie would LOVE it!
It was a really fun night! Definitely put us in the Christmas mood!!
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| We had a bunch of couples over for a husband vs wives contest on decorating gingerbread houses.
Vote for which one you think is the best:
Gingerbread House #1
Gingerbread House #2
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| This is such a fun time of year......all the food, decorations, music, etc!!
We had a great Thanksgiving. We had it here in our house and invited over some girls from church. They are three sisters ranging in age from 19-28, and God has put them through some difficult providences. Two years ago, their dad found out he was sick with cancer, and two weeks later he passed away. Then six months after that, the family was on a road trip when they were hit head-on, and their mom and brother were instantly killed. The girls had serious injuries too, but God spared them. So now here they are, their dad, mom, and brother suddenly taken from them, and you can imagine how hard the Holidays are for them. It was really sweet to spend that day with them and see how strong their faith is. They are sad of course, but they have such a peace knowing that their family are in a much better place! We hoped to be a blessing and encouragement to them, but we ended up being so blessed by them!
Here are some pics of our Thanksgiving Day:
 my first time cooking a turkey by myself  our ridiculous amount of dessert (this was for only six people!!)  Kylie wearing, then eating, one of the treats she helped me make
(it's a "Pilgrim Hat" made with a chocolate-dipped marshmallow and chocolate cookie)
 Carter with Heidi, one of the sisters who came overThe next day, we went and got our tree and started decorating the house for Christmas. While we were getting our tree, it was snowing......perfect! 
The
tree we got is insanely huge........eleven feet tall. Jason really
wanted a big tree for our front window, to the point where he was
willing to give up all his Christmas presents for the tree he wanted!
It was scary decorating the top of it!!
We
enjoyed the rest of the weekend listening to Christmas music, putting
out decorations, and enjoying our TONS of Thanksgiving leftovers!!Hope you're all enjoying this special time of year! | | |
| Every year we talk about what to do on Halloween. Jason HATES Halloween. And I agree for the most part....all the nasty goblins and witches that are out.......yuck. But I do enjoy seeing kids dressed up in cute, non-scary costumes. Plus, we know our neighbors see it as innocent and wouldn't understand why we refuse to participate. This is our first Halloween in our neighborhood, so we decided on a compromise. We DID hand out candy.......we want to be open to our neighbors, and seize the opportunity to meet all of them.
We didn't take the kids out trick-or-treating, but we did dress them up, and we had them at the door to help hand out candy. We tried to use it as a chance to focus on others, talking to Kylie about making other children happy and being a blessing to them. (She did ask for candy for herself about fifty times, so I don't know if the message got through.........but we sure tried!!)
Anyway, here they are in their costumes:
 Carter is obsessed with dogs right now, so there was only one choice for him.
I know the circle around his eye is FAR from perfect, but the kid would not sit still. I had him pinned to the ground with Jason's help, but he's a fighter. He'll be a wrestler someday I'm sure of it. Oh well.......you get the idea.
And Kylie.........as much as I would have liked to be more creative and original, she would settle for nothing less than being a princess. She dresses herself in this outfit almost every day, but the hair and makeup were special.
 
So yesterday,
Jason came home saying he didn't feel like dinner because he just
wasn't hungry. I was so annoyed.......I had the oven heating for the
meal I had made, and we were all ready to eat. He asked me if I could
save the meal for another time. I said, "Well just because you're not
hungry doesn't mean we aren't!!" I was pretty irritated. Then the
doorbell rang and he told me to get it, which also annoyed me because I
HATE answering the door when I'm not expecting anyone. Bitter, I went
to answer it. There stood a girl from his office (Liz) holding two dozen
gorgeous roses!! She handed them to me with a paper that said, "Dinner
for two at Romano's" and two movie tickets! She said, "Happy November
1st! I'm here to babysit....you need to get ready to go."
November 1st is the day we got engaged. I didn't even think about it
at all!! Jason was really busy this summer around our anniversary, so
we didn't do anything special. So he planned a surprise date night for
November 1st! Of course of all days, yesterday I hadn't done a THING
for myself.......my hair wasn't done at all, I had grungy clothes on,
etc. I ran upstairs and tried to throw myself together, then we went
out for dinner and a movie. It was so wonderful! We haven't been on a date
in a LONG time, so I thoroughly enjoyed it. I have the sweetest guy in
the world.
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