Hey friends! I have moved again to A So-Called Runner! This change will be permeant as CourtneyFos.com will go away on June 1st. Since my blogging is so sporadic I have decided it was time to get thing to place where I am one, not paying large fees to keep the blog going and two something that is simple and easy for me. 
The girls are changing and getting bigger, plus I am working again (which involves managing several websites, so I wanted one that is just me holding myself accountable in my love for running!) You are welcome to join me over on asocalledrunner.com if you want to follow my journey to achieving a few goals I have, clean eating and the life around that! Thanks you so much for following me for so long, come say hi at asocalledrunner.com! 
I cant seem to understand or process the way I have been feeling the past few days. I have no idea what the families feel, the community of CT feels and anyone who witnessed the pure violence that happened on Friday. I cant imagine being a teacher and thinking the world they work in everyday has a new added layer of hate to think about, I cant imagine the parents who will not be putting children on the bus on Monday but I can imagine being a parent and the loss of a child. In no way can I compare my experience with the parents experiences, my daughter died the day she was born and it was something I can see as peaceful but still heartbreaking. I don't have to wonder too much what happened the minutes before or ask for answers of why someone would ever do this, but I do realize how it feels to come to a house full of signs and reminders of a life that will never be the same again. What we can all realize together is that life is something we have very little control over and somethings we worry about so much on a daily basis aren't worth the pain and agony we let ourselves think they are. Our focus needs to be on making each other know we are loved, we need to allow others to feel okay with getting the help they need when we see that something is wrong. We need take off all the stigmas we have created for those with mental illness. I have committed my years of college learning to be someone who can help those with mental illness, I live around people with it and at times I live with it. It is not something we should hide or be afraid of people finding out about, it should be like any major aliment and we should seek help as soon as we or our loved ones can see of feel something is different in us. We need to remove the veil of secrecy we have for it and realize it is killing people every single day in so many different ways. Mental illness is not a made up diseases, it is not something that we can pray away or just tell ourselves to stop feeling. It is real and has real consequences if we ignore it. I cant get this feeling I have out of the pit of my stomach of true heartbreak and all I want to do is try to analyze the why and what but I can't. I can weep, and hope that real change will occur in so many areas but I also hate it took something so horrible for this change to happen. So as I clean up my house today, picking up the little reminders of the family I have at home, I will stop and remember that the perfect Christmas presents, the clean bedrooms and insecurities that come from keeping up with the Jones are not important. I want everyday to enjoy the life around me, for what I have and let my family know that every minute I cant, I live for them because all to often those minutes are not as long as we ever plan. Writing this helped a bit with the pit that I cant seem to shake but I know that my focus over the next week will not be anything worth writing on here and just seem fake, so I wont be taking just Monday off for silence, I will be taking a rest from the blog for a while, to really decide what is worth it anymore. I hope everyone has a Happy Holiday and New Year, my thoughts are with you all as the season and I hope that our 2013 will be more change, less hate. 
I love Christmas crinkle cookies, they are my favorite thing to eat at Christmas time so I decided it was the perfect cookie to make for my first year of participating in The Great Food Blogger Swap of 2012! I decided it was time to swap up the recipe a family member gave me and make it a bit different which resulted in a poofy little cookie that was very fudgy tasting, so these little guys will be called Christmas Snowballs!! 
- 8 tablespoons unsalted butter
- 1 cup of white sugar
- 4 eggs
- 1 Box (8 ozs) semisweet chocolate, chopped and melted
- 1/2 tbsp vanilla extract
- 3 cups of flour (I used whole wheat pastry flour)
- 1/2 teaspoon sea salt (trust me this is worth it!)
- 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
- Powder Sugar
In a mix beat together the sugar and eggs until whipped, add eggs slowly than add melted chocolate. (I just chopped the chocolate and microwaved it slowly, stirring every 30 seconds until done).
In a bowl mix together the flour, sea salt and baking powder. Whisk the ingredients for a few seconds before adding into the mixer. Add slowly into the wet ingredients until incorporated. The dough is super sticky right now so put in fridge for a couple of hours. 
Preheat over to 325 degrees In a bowl place about 1/2 cup of sifted powdered sugar. Roll about a tbsp of dough into a ball than drop in sugar coating the whole thing ball in white. Place on a lined cookie sheet. Bake for 8-9 minutes. 
Let the cool a bit and eat as soon as you can, or ship them to some awesome people thanks to CookieSwap! If you want to join in next here, here is all the info! It doesn't get much better than cookies in the mail! 
It was a crazy week in this house last week thanks to a virus Eisley came down with! Do I not sound like a broken record? I have been literally holding her for the past couple of days as she tried to get over a temp that was about 103 for several days. It was miserable and made for one extremely grumpy girl, so I am happy to say I think we have finally got over that hurdle and hopefully its our turn to be healthy! I am going to be working on making sure this darn house is disinfected like crazy today because I think we are always recovering from some sort of dang bug! I cant wait to get things back to normal and even thought its the holidays, my mother is having surgery this week and I have a few finals to take, I want to get back to a happy routine we had going so as long as everything above goes smoothly and no one gets sick (fingers crossed!) I am going to make sure to make this happen!! Monday -Dinner: Brown Butter and Sage Butternut Squash Tortellini and Brussels Sprouts -Workout: 3 Mile Run Tuesday -Dinner: Sloppy Joes, Baked Fries and Fruit Salad -Workout: 2 Mile Run and Gym or Jillian Wednesday -Dinner: Turkey/Cheese Sandwiches, Corn and Fruit Salad -Workout: PIYO and 2 Mile Run Thursday -Dinner: Chicken Tikka Masala, Rice and Naan -Workout: 3 Mile Run and Jillian Friday -Dinner: Lime Coconut Chicken Soup with Avocados and Rice -Workout: 3 Mile Run and Bodypump Saturday -Dinner:Out -Workout: 4 Mile Run Sunday -Dinner: Roasted Chicken, Mashed Sweet Potatoes and Cranberries -Workout: Rest What is on your menu this week? Have you had to deal with an unhealthy family this season? (Tomorrow I will write a post for Hope Endures Round Up) 
I love decorating my home and changing thing around all the time, so Christmas is the perfect time of year to start experimenting! This year I wanted to change things up and throw my whole family for a curve ball! I decided we would move the Christmas down to our Family room and the living room would be a little more understated! 
I have future plans for this fireplace to make it a little more in tune with my style but for the moment I can work with it and love how the mantel turned out this year! 
The best part is the real garland, I just love the way it hangs and how it really just fills the area without much work on my part! The reindeer heads are my FAVORITE estate sale find this year! I just truly adore them, they are perfect for my Wyoming themed Christmas! (I went to WY this year and cant get it out of my head so I did the living room with thoughts of WY!) 
These berries also seem perfect for the mantel to add color and they just really pop with my little silver vase! I have another mantel in our family room with the stockings but I forgot to take pics of it! I went with a red, green, white candy theme downstairs! 
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