The couple who live in Santa Fe County, New Mexico, United States, have just one ‘date night’ away from their children each year. They have six boys and four girls aged between nine months and 10 years, all of whom are home-schooled and ferried around their neighbourhood in a 15-seater van.
She is mother to Clint, 10; Clay, eight; Cade, seven; Callie, six; Cash, five; twins Colt and Case, four; Calena, two; Caydue, 21 months and Coralee, 10 months. She has had seven vaginal births, two caesareans and, sadly, two miscarriages.
The children are happy to wear hand-me-down clothes and shoes, and the family shops in the sales to cut costs. Once a year they enjoy a family holiday for a week, camping near relatives in Georgia, 1,500 miles away – which costs them $1,000 for travel and expenses.
The couple love their life as part of a massive family and have no desire to stop having children any time soon.
“We want to have more if we can,” said Courtney, whose youngest children Caydie and Coralee, were born just 361 days apart.
“We want to have 12 children, a family of 14 even.
“My husband is the eldest of 10, so before we got married, he joked about having as many as his mother had.
"The kids want us to be like the film Cheaper by the Dozen, where the parents compromise their careers to raise 12 children.”
“I love having them with me all the time and seeing them learn and knowing what they are learning,’ said Courtney, who also teaches local children at her church on Sundays, but is not currently doing so due to the coronavirus lockdown.
"I can adapt the lessons to each child and I don’t have to make them sit for hours all day. I love how it’s flexible and the kids can run around outside or feed the lambs between lessons.
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"I’m more like a tutor. I’ll set the children work to do and they will come up to me and ask me questions about it. I’ve often got a baby in my arms, or I’m changing a nappy and I’ll have four kids queuing up to ask me a maths question.’
Since meeting through mutual friends at a church camp in Georgia in 2007, Courtney and Chris have become soul mates.
They spent a year living 300 miles apart, with her in North Carolina and him in Georgia – before tying the knot in October 2008, when she moved states to join him.
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