CORTNEY'S CORNER

Woah, I have not blogged in quite a long while. I have been incredibly busy since school has started, which stinks a lot. Chemistry is killing me slowly, day by day. I can't wait til it's over! Anyway, many things have been happening in my life but when I sat down to blog, nothing really came to mind to share about.  Then I was struck with inspiration. If you didn't know, I am OBSESSED with the Chronicles of Narnia. Like, seriously, next to the Bible, these are the best books ever and if you haven't read them yet, YOU MUST. Oh my, they are so good Anyway, I'm doing this devotional called "A Year with Aslan" and  it takes excerpts from each of the seven books and then poses questions and whatnot that relate to your life. And it's awesome. It's just such a fun devotional and if you've read all the books, I highly recommend it.  This was an excerpt that I read a few days ago from The Silver Chair. I know it's long, but read it all because ...

Yay for a DYI post! So, we have this one HUGE wall in our living room. It's massive. And prior to a few days ago, it was very empty and very bland. So we decided to hang some scripture and make a photo wall! I guess this isn't a true DYI post because I honestly just don't feel like typing out the whole process of what we did. But here are some pictures documenting our DYI-adventure! BEFORE: (Only half) of our big empty wall. And Siple. Yay for cheap things that can be spray-painted to look chic and not as cheap!  Side note: we listened to our favorite song, "My Heart Will Go On" by Celine Dion over and over again while we did this.  Listen here!   Another side note: we bought some cute flowers to match our cute living room. The ones in there before HAD to go. And after some more spray-painting, drying, haning nails and selecting photos... TADA! AFTER:   Here's a close up of the photo wall: A few of the frames are still empty, we kn...

Last weekend, the YoungLife leaders from NKY headed out to Gaudtropolis for our lovely fall leader weekend. It was a great weekend, full of wonderful conversations, awesome worship and some legit lessons. During our free time on Saturday, Tieke, Sean, Drif, Morgan, Jess and I embarked on "The Gregventure" (unfortunately, our other Greg, Greg Baker, couldn't attend). We hiked from the mountain that The Gaudtraud's live on, down to the Ohio River. And it was a trek. When we first begun, Tieke concocted the idea that we could create a blog about it. So here it is. Unfortunately, I stuck my camera in Tieke's Camelback and it got all wet. So the pictures turned out a bit blurry. Oops. We found an animal skull! Sean and Morgan with the animal skull. Me, Morgan and Jess on sweet railroad tracks we stumbled upon. This picture would be really awesome if it wasn't blurry, ha. Such a pretty flower! Once again, it would've looked a lot coole...

I have nothing else to blog about, so I might as well talk about our apartment again... So, Ali and I have come to the conclusion that we should have our own television show. We haven't thought of any catchy names yet, but it would be about the hilarious things that happen to us in our apartment. Seriously. We encounter the most ridiculous situations here. But in a good way. Generally, they're extremely funny. I'll ramble off a few to you, but they are kinda "you had to be there" moments. So, if you're not falling out of your seat laughing it's okay. But take my word, if you were watching these events in person, you'd be crying from laughing so hard. 1. So, our first night in our apartment Ali and I are sitting in the living room watching tv. Then, out of nowhere, one of those bugs with 598374 legs comes crawling across the floor! Actually, sprinting is probably a more appropriate word. This thing was lightening fast. It should of had music playing a...

Ali and I are officially moved into our apartment! Woohooo! Here are some pictures of our humble abode. This is our little family room and deck... and donuts. This is our kitchen and dining area. This is my bedroom. Not pictured is my frickin' giant closet, which is basically the same size as my whole room. I took a picture of Ali's room too, but decided against posting it. She might not want a picture of her bedroom on the world wide web. I mean, it's understandable.  Our hope for this place is that it truly can be a place where the Lord dwells. We want to show Christ's love to our neighbors. And we really hope that this home helps our ministry. We hope it can serve as a place of refuge. If one of our girls is having a problem or some sort of issue, we want them to know that they can come here and be completely comfortable talking/praying/just getting away from it. And not just high schools students, everyone! We both have prayer boards in our rooms tha...

This is Rae'la. I left Rae'la for last for a reason. She has an interesting story, one that I'm sure I will have trouble expressing fulling over my computer. But I'll try. God taught me so stinkin' much through her. So, Rae'la was the girl I was most nervous about going into camp. She is... very not-positive. We'll put it that way. On the first night, our speaker, Casey Dunn, talked about how there are three kinds of people in the world. 1) People who don't believe in God. 2) People who believe in God but think He is removed from creation and not personal. And 3) People who believe in God and think He's active and alive and loves us intimately. So at cabin time on the first night we were talking about which category we fell into. I noticed Rae'la had not spoken a word all night so I asked her opinion. She said that she was the first kind of person because her dad died when she was six years old and she didn't understand why a God that loved ...

Waaahhhh, I am so bad about blogging in a timely manner. My apologies. Meet Devin. She is so awesome. She just finished her sophomore year at Lloyd. I've known Devin for a while but was never really super close to her. She went to camp last year at Timberwolf and gave her life away at the say-so. But during one of our conversations earlier in the week she confessed that she never really believed. She stood up last year because she felt pressured; that wasn't truly an expression of her heart. Which I kind of gathered just from knowing her over the past few months, but I was stoked that she was able to be real with me and admit that. As the week went on, I saw her have another "best week of her life". It was so awesome to witness her constant smile and laughter because this girl has had such a broken life. She has such a messed up family life and at only 16 years old, has had 12 surgeries because she was born with cancer. After the cross talk, us Lloyd folk gathered ...