Happy Valentines Day!

Happy Valentines Day

From the Johnson's



Until Next Season

My name is Courtney and Yes my family watches and loves Toddlers and Tiaras!

My family ( and yes including Adam, when he is home ) will sit down and watch this show.  We laugh so hard and our hearts go out to some of the girls during the season. 

Our favorite episode from the season featured a little girl from Georgia who completely won our hearts.  Tillery still yells "Honeybooboochild!".  Here is a clip so you can see for yourself.

As you can see the mothers on this show are INSANE!  And of course they love to portray us southerners as just that. Our favorite on the show is Makenzie. We fell in love with her a few seasons ago when she completely reminded us of Tillery. She had a "NINI". And her very outstanding attitude was a lot like that of our own. Here is a clip of Makenzie...



Adam and I always sit in amazement at the moms and sometimes dads on the show... They talk about diets to 6 year olds, wax a four year old's back, tell them how awful they did, and the list goes on.. The worst mom of the season defintely went to this crazy mom.



As you can see we enjoy this show and can't wait until the new season!

Boogie Shoes

So the girls have been taking dancing for a few weeks now and really enjoy it!  Taylor is taking tap and ballet. Tillery is taking hip hop.  This completely fits their personalities.  Tillery's costume will consist of black hoodie and pants with blue converse and a blue tutu and Taylor's costumes are more frufru.  I am so glad that they found something that they enjoy!  ( and that is is girlie too )

What a change in pace.....

As to my surprise...  The girls informed Adam and myself over the wonderful break that we had, that they no longer want to play softball.  They want to try something different.  We were both a little taken back at first.  All the time and money that we have invested so far.  I mean softball equipment is not cheap and neither is pitching lessons once a week.  But after lots of discussion and talks with the girls, we have decided to let them do exactly what they want to do.  Tillery will begin theatre this week.  She is completely looking forward to it.  Taylor will begin dance.  This is what they wanted to do and I am really excited for them.  We will keep you updated on their progress!

Welcome 2012!

As we begin a new year it is a great time to reflect on the last year...


Our family started 2011 living in a foster home.  Living with us was a 17 year old teenage girl.  WOW!  I do not look forward to those years with my girls.  We welcomed into the home several kids whose story would absolutely break your heart.  We welcomed Gabriel at the end of February.  We immediately fell in love with him.  It was a MAJOR adjustment to have a baby in the house again.  As we started 2011 we thought that we were suppose to Foster little did we know what we were about to embark on.  In April a great group of people form our church Golden Acres planted a church in Fort Mitchell.  We did this with no seminary education.  It was a group of several couples that put our heads together and we DID church the way we thought would work best for the environment.  We launched the church on Easter Sunday.  We had no idea how many we would have that Sunday but we were blown away by the great response.  Months of hard work had paid off.  We are continuing this effort every Sunday.  We have met some really great people in the Fort Mitchell area and we are looking forward to what is to come.  In May we said goodbye to the teenage foster child that had lived with us for 6 months.  At this point we decided for the sake of our children and our sanity, that we needed to move back into our house that did not sale and focus on our family and the church.  We moved home in June and we took little Gabriel with us.  We enjoyed traveling this summer to the beach and our time back at home.  We were playing softball and even had a travel team that traveled every Saturday and played ball.  The girls enjoyed this while it lasted.  We started school in August and the girls are now in 1st and 4th grade.  We have been busy with school projects this year.  In November we said goodbye to Gabriel, it was really tough on our family.  We look at it now as not having him leave us but adding to our family.  The wonderful couple that he is with, we consider family.  We enjoyed Christmas and New Years with family and friends.  We look forward to what 2012 has in store for us.  Welcome 2012!

In a month...

Well lets see.  It has been a month since my last post and let me see if I can briefly update you....

Been unpacking for what seems like forever!
Taylor has had a couple of Travel Ball tournaments and we have done really well, we even got to play in a World Series tournament and beat the best team there.  We play this weekend in Enterprise against a bunch of teams we have never played against.  GO CV SOFTBALL!!
We signed up to play Fall Ball..
We started school...  Yes we have been in school over a week.  We have a first grader and a fourth grader and LOTS of homework each night between the two.  They both love their teachers this year.
We survived VBS!!!  We had our first VBS at the Fort and we survived... 
We enjoyed all of our Fun Fridays together... The last one we went to White Water and we all had a blast!
My sister got engaged and we are all in the wedding in December, we got to go dress shopping and all got fitted for dresses.

I think that is the big things that we have done in the last month.  We still have Gabe with us and he is crawling now.  Will try to update again before next month.

On my mind

It has been quite some time since my last post.  Since then we have been very busy.  We moved back home, we have been continuing our work at The Fort Church and it is growing, we took a trip to the beach, we had all-stars tournament ( and won), and we had our first travel ball experience.  Also in this time we got Gabe back.  The Aunt decided that it was not going to work out to have Gabe placed with her.  It breaks my heart to see kids tossed around.  What kind of system do we have?????  I have learned over the last few months of fostering children that our system straight up SUCKS!!!!  If yesterday's trial of Casey Anthony wasn't enough for an indicator.  A woman that murders her child gets away with it.  I can't be the judge of the woman.  There is only one true judge.  Where is justice in this world we live in????  For example, we had one child that lived with us that had been in and out of the system since they were 6.  They were placed with a sibling that was only 5 years older.  A 22 year old individual will be the primary caretaker of a 17 year old, a 13 year old and a 5 year old.  Tell me how in the world is that in the best interest of the child???  We had another child that was obviously abused by a male.  She would not look at Adam and was VERY disrespectful to him.  I woke up the first night she was in my home and found her sleeping with her hands down her pants.  She told me so many stories.  She had been thru more at 4 years of age and seen more things than I have.  When i told our system about it, I was told to take notes just in case it ever came up in court.  She was placed back with a family member.  Where is the protection of that child???  It saddens me to know that we pay all these tax dollars and our children are in this type of danger everyday.  These are just a couple of the stories I have more.  My stories don't even break the ice of the children that are in custody of the state.  I remember that I was told when we first started that foster children have a vicious cycle to break.  Once they end up in foster care, then their children are likely to end up the same way.  I have seen this to be proven true.  There are beautiful children that could be adopted by families that would love them and give them the world, but our system is so deranged it wants to protect the parent... NO WONDER PEOPLE PAY THOUSANDS TO GO OVER SEAS TO ADOPT.  I never understood why people would do it, but now I do.  I just had to rant and rave!