Happy Birthday Jenn!

Today Jenn turns 26!  Yay Jenn!  My favorite things about Jenn - I like how recently she changed the spelling of her name from Jen to Jenn.  I like that she is very loving and really dedicates herself to everything she does.  I like that she is having a baby!  I get to be an aunt and I am excited about it!  I also like that she is my sister, and that we are much better friends than we used to be!  Today Cortney, my mom, Jenn, and I went to the downtown library and then to Red Robin to celebrate her birthday, we had fun just hanging out and talking!

Here are some of my favorite pictures of Jenn -

Not sure why I like this one...but I do...that was a fun day!

 Ummmmm...only one word - Gorgeous! 

 And when she smiles she is even prettier!

Hope you had a great birthday Jenn!  Love you!

Cortneys Prayer...

We have been teaching Cortney to say new things in the prayer, depending on what is going on, so it is not the same prayer every time.  I guess it is working because she gave this prayer for breakfast:

"Dear Heavenly Father,

Thank you for Pop tarts (what she had for breakfast).  thank you for mommy and Cortney, and honey (her bear).  And thank you that daddy got girl pull ups this time!  In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen"

I really had to hold myself together during the prayer.  Last time I sent Chris to the store to get pull ups (she only uses them at quiet time and bed time now) for some reason he got the boy ones.  She always had this look on her face that she didn't like them very much.  And joking with Chris I said "What did the blue give it away?"  Oh well, she finally made it through the last one last night, and we showed her the new bag of pink ones, and she was very excited about it!

So blessed that she is learning to pray for what is really important to her!  Plus it is just a super cute story!

Cortney Turns 3!!! Tangled Theme Party!

Happy Birthday to Cortney on the 22nd!  On the 21st we had a little party for Cortney!  We invited family and friends and it was a Tangled Theme.  It was fun putting everything together, here are some pictures!

I cooked nearly everything from scratch, and I have to say right now I basically have no desire to cook for a while!  I made thse pascal pops!  They are the little chamelon from the movie

 I also made this donuts tower - with a candy coated ice cream cone on top.

 Cortney wanted cupcakes for her birthday.  I found these cute flower cupcake holders, and a great frosting recipe!

 This is my pride and joy!  I made this cake from scratch expect for the flowers, those I bought.

 Here is the table spread I had

 Love these!  I made them from scratch as well. they are braided danishes, I thought it would be cute because it was like her hair.  It is time consuming to make, but pretty easy all in all.  My dad almost didn't believe I made them myself!

 I braided streamers together to make a big braid that we hung around our living room.  took forever, but looked really good!

 Another view of the table...

 I also hung a few of these around the house...

 Her favorite part of the party, she tells me, was when everyone sang happy birthday and she blew out the candle!

All in all it was so much fun!  And I cannot believe she is 3 now!  I am amazed at all she can do, and how such a sweetie she really is!  Love you Cort!  Glad you liked your party!

Cortneys Story

Cortney was sitting at the table coloring the other day.  When I listened closer to what she was saying I realized she was writing a story!

Drum!

For Christmas Santa got Cortney a drum!  She loves it so much.  Every now and then Chris will take out his uke, and play and cort gets to play the drums.  With certain songs she can even keep the beat pretty well!  She always gets so excited when we bring it out!

Look Mom!

So this was about a month or so back but I went into Corts room after she had been playing for a while and showed me this:

Then she said -"look mom!  They are on the Ariel ride!"

I think we have another Disneyland fan!  She keeps asking when we are going to go again and I told her that we need to save our money first, so anytime she finds a penny she puts it in our Disneyland Jar fund, and then asks how much more we need.  I always tell her much more.

Texas / Christmas!

We were all able to make it down to Dallas for Christmas, and it was great to spend time with this side of the family too! I didn't take a whole lot of pictures but we did a lot of fun things.  Cortney went to her first movie in the Theater - Muppets, which she loved.  We saw a few more movies too, and went to some amazing restaurants.

The morning of Christmas we told Cortney to go down and see if the cookies were gone and Santa had come.  She ran in and saw that they were gone.  There was a small oh!  and she got the cutest look on her face, that said - He came!  It is real!  Cutest thing ever!

Like I said I didn't take too many pictures but here are a few:

 Cortney opening presents, these were paper dolls that are really cool - they are going to last much longer and they are held together by magnents.

 Cort giving Paul a kiss

 Cort showing me the empty plate!

 Jumping on the tramp in the back yard - I had to get some pictures of that hair!

 Playing football with daddy!

 Playing football with paul!

It was fun to have all the siblings there for Christmas, but after carpooling with each other, all the older siblings agree - next time we fly, instead of driving over 21 hours!

Thanksgiving / Disneyland!!!!

So it is a tradition in my family to go to Disneyland every 4 years on Thanksgiving (possibly turning into 2 years now because we had so much fun - hopefully we can save the money and go in 2!)

Here are some pictures from the vacation!

The first morning we got there we all went down to the hotel buffet and I hurried back up before Cortney and put a surprise on her bed!  It was a present, with a note from Rapunzel asking Cortney to wear this dress so they could look the same.  She loves it and still thinks Rapunzel gave it to her.  Everytime she puts this dress on my heart just melts.

 Cortney and me in the Mr Toad Car

 Daddy and Cortney waiting to go on the dumbo ride, she was so excited!

 Definitely one of her top 5 favorites!

 On the carousel

 I like this picture a lot, we were just waiting in line eating a snack.

 I like how she looks like she is behind bars in this one, she was very excited about this ride as well!

 Meeting Goofy - I didn't upload all the pictures of characters, just a couple but she really liked goofy so I wanted to put this one in.

 On the Small World ride.  She was very excited for this one as well, she was sitting by Nana and Papa

 This is when we were waiting in line to see Ranpunzel

 She was just in shock the whole time, but they did a great job, Rapunzel and Flynn talked about how she looked just like her.

 She also showed them her name tag, they did a good job pretending to be interested!

 She didn't smile in the picture, but like I said I think she was just so excited that she was in shock the whole time, but she still likes to talk about how she met them!

The trip was amazing - I mean come on it is Disneyland!  It was great to spend time with family too!