Thursday Thirteen

Thirteen random things from Courtney's childhood that

stand out in her memory to this day.

1. In preschool, (yes I actually remember this!), I was frequently slightly late. One day, I found a picture of my dad laying in bed in our family album, and I took it with me to preschool and showed it to my teacher and said, "this is why I'm always late". LOL (which is actually funny to me because for most of my life to this day my dad is never late anywhere anymore, so it's strange to think he was back then).

2. My sister (who is 6 years older than me) and I use to put on shows for our parents (and other people's parents if we were over at someone else's house). We'd do songs, skits, etc. The song I remember most went like this "We are the Portsmouth girls, we wear our hair in curls, we wear our father's shirts, we don't believe in skirts, we wear dungarees way below our knees, and when it comes to men we do the best we can!" LOL (Portsmouth was where we lived at the time, in case you're wondering what that was). I also remember the skit "The Ugliest Person in the World". Anyone remember that one? I think it was a well-known one.

3. Long car rides! We use to drive from New Hampshire to Missouri every year. (We lived in NH and we had family in MO). That's a lot of time in the car. And we also went on vacations every year, driving not flying. My sister (Jill) and I would sing songs in the backseat of the van and mom would get all flustered and yell "would you two pipe down back there!"

4. When we were younger than that, I remember my dad would make up stories to tell us in the car. It would be an on-going saga with the same characters, Betty and Bobby- the were bears. It was actually very creative. I won't elaborate on the storyline in case my dad wants to publish them sometime...wouldn't want anyone to steal his storyline, ya know! LOL

5. I don't remember exactly where we were or why, but I remember one year I got very sick when we were driving somewhere. I had bronchitis, tonsilitis, and strep throat. I remember being in a hotel room and my mom and I played "imaginary UNO". We loved to play UNO, but we didn't have any Uno cards with us, so we pretended. Mom still occassionally jokes about how she got beat by a 6-year-old at imaginary Uno! lol

6. I remember 2 toys I had that I was scared of. lol There was a Ronald McDonald clown doll that I was a little leary of. It didn't look like a happy friendly doll. But even more than that, there was this Mickey Mouse head pillow thing...one of those that was a pajama bag too. I think it must have been a homemade one. I don't know why, but that thing just looked freaky to me. Just a strange felt MM head looking at me. lol

7. I had a loft bed that my dad built. It was awesome! And every few years he would re-design it and remake it to fit my needs at the time as I got older. It started as bunk beds, then was a loft bed with lots of room for toys underneath. Then he turned the bottom part into a desk area. Then when I was older and didn't want to sleep up top anymore, we put a twin bed underneath, and a nice desk area, and the top was now a place to keep my stuff, and sometimes I would go up there and read or whatever.

8. Birthday parties were always a blast. As I mentioned in a previous post, my mom always went way overboard on parties for us. Everything had a theme and lots to go with it. And every year was different. I remember loving so many of them- especially a horseback riding one and a bowling one. The bowling one was actually a surprise slumber party! We went bowling, and while we were at the bowling alley, everyone's parents dropped off their kids stuff at my house. The whole time I thought everyone was leaving after the bowling part. It was a great surprise that all of my friends were staying the night! It was so much fun.

9. Friday night was pizza night! Every Friday night we had pizza. Either we'd go out to a pizza place, or we'd order in. And if we were out of town on the road, we'd stop at a pizza place in whatever town we were in. As we got older, I would even wait to go out with my friends until after I had had my Friday night pizza with my family. This is something I hope to revive with my husband and boys as a family night together tradition.

10. Christmas: we always celebrated Christmas eve at my grandma's (mom's mom) and Christmas day at Granny's (dad's mom). When we were little, Santa would deliver all of our gifts to one of the grandparent's houses (they alternated years which one Santa would come to). When we got a little older and knew what was going on, my parents saved themselves the trouble of packing/hiding/hauling the gifts and we started celebrating Christmas about a week before Christmas at our own house, getting our "Santa" gifts then, and then going to the grandparents on Christmas Eve & Christmas like always. To this day we still go to Grandma's on Christmas eve and we were still going to Granny's on Christmas day until we got married and she decided to change the day anyway.

11. Thanksgiving: we always went to my aunt's house for Thanksgiving. All of us kids would play, the women talked, and the men slept in front of the football game. We still do this every other year (and the other years we celebrate with Joe's family).

12. Easter: We'd do an Easter egg/candy hunt in the morning before church. It was great fun! There was always a ton of candy! Then we'd go to church. Then my sister and I would sit down at the kitchen table, dump out all our candy, and separate it into catagories. All the chocolate footballs in one pile, all the marshmallow candies in another pile, all the peanut butter cups in another pile, and so on and so forth. And the jellybeans, they all got divided out as far as color! All the red jellybeans, all the green, etc, etc. And then we would divide and trade our candy until we both had the EXACT same amount of each and every kind and color of candy! LOL My parents were still doing Easter egg/candy hunts for us until we moved out. Even when Joe and I were dating and we went to my parent's house at Easter, they still did one for us...only instead of eggs, they hid candy, summer sausage, and bottles of beer for us! LOL

13. My parents always supported me in everything I ever did! At least one of them, if not both, always came to see my every dance recital, gymnastics meets, plays, half-time show (I danced on the poms squad at half-time in high school), dance competitions, track meets, award ceremony, sports banquets, you name it, they were there supporting me 100%. It was always such a great feeling when I'd be out there competing or dancing or about to do my event at a track meet, or whatever, and looking up into the stands and seeing them paying full attention with smiles on their faces, and knowing that they would be just as happy and proud of me whether I did great or not.

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