Colorado Crockers

What is your whole name? Elie-nana Grace Crocker What is your favorite thing to eat? Peanut butter and jelly and watermelon Who are some of your friends? Tristan, big Grace and Little Grace and Abby What is your favorite thing to play with inside? Blocks. I am good at this game. What foods do you not like? Pizza, lettuce, hummus, tomatoes and onions What so you like to do outside? Swing What makes you angry? When Addilyn knocks over my towers What makes you happy? When there is an ice cream truck What are you afraid of? Monster and bad dreams What do you want to be when you grow up? A "fighterfighter", a ballerina, a block builder and I want to marry Tristan because he loves Jesus. What can 4 year olds do that 2 year olds can't? Feed the puppies when the container is almost empty because my arms are longer and I can run faster and jump higher. What will you be able to do when your 6? Read books! Write stories, climb tree and run the fastest. Tell me how you ge...

Annabelle Faith is... -5 and a half months old - On a decent schedule : Wake at 6:30 nap at 8:30 nap at 12:30 and nap at 4:30. To bed at 7 - a terrible night time sleeper, like all Crocker babies before her - amazed by her toes - rolling all over the place - sitting by herself, except when she forgets to. - still on only breast milk. Maybe we will try solid food soon. - has long chicken legs. I apparently am unable to make a baby with fat rolls. - grabbing anything in her reach. I can no longer hold her and drink a cup of coffee. - in love with her sisters... and the dogs. - is a totally mamas girl. The only one of the three! - a blessing and totally loved by her family.

Ergh . Blogger is stupid. I flipped the pictures but for some reason blogger refuses to post them the right way! Sorry. Oh well. I took the girls to get pictures done last month and then promptly lost the CD that had all the negatives . Today I found the CD and thought I would share the wealth. I will post more when I figure out what the problem is. I won't be held responsible for your neck cramps.

There is nothing healthy about this cake. It isn't on any diet plan. You should make it anyway. This would be an easy one to do dairy free, too, if you go for that sort of thing. I made it for friends who were coming over for dinner and ate almost half of it before they got here (hey, I hadn't had time to eat lunch, I was hungry!) This started as a recipe from my mom called "Sloppy Pineapple Cake" but it wasn't gluten free. So I had to change it. And then I seem to have this problem following directions in general, recipes in particular, so I adapted it some more. It is freakin ' awesome , but you will need a cup of coffee or some milk to go with it. Here ya go: Pina Colada Cake 2 eggs 2 c. sugar 2 c. flour (if your GF use 1c. rice, 1/2 c. oat, and 1/2 c. tapioca plus 2 t. xanthan gum) 1 tsp baking soda 20 crushed pineapple 1/4 c. butter (if dairy free use margarine ) 1/4 c. coconut oil 1 c. sugar 1 tsp. vanilla 2/3 c. coconut milk Mix eggs and sugar ...

First, let me admit my ignorance. I have known the story of Esther for a long time, I have seen the Veggie tails, and somehow I missed that Purim is a celebration of (spoiler alert!) Esther saving the Jews. Just in case anyone else missed that, here is the Readers Digest Version of the story of Esther, in my own words. Once upon a time there was a little girls named Esther. She was a nobody, a Jew , and orphan being raised by her uncle Morty. The king of Esthers country, Zerk the Jerk, was annoyed at the current Queen who refused to strut her stuff for him and all his drunken buddies and was looking for her replacement. Good help was hard to find and his posse of advisers left something to be desired. They had the brilliant idea to hold a beauty contest in all the land to find the new queen, and bonus for Zerk, he got to take each girl for a test run to find his favorite. Well, after a year of getting work done to look her best Esther knocked the kings socks off and became the Quee...

I was reading an article written by a mom the other day about loving her children. This doesn't really seem an article worthy topic; most mothers love there children. She took it a step further. First she related a situation with her then 1 year old son who wanted to nurse all.the.time. It was driving her crazy and she was trying to wean him before his new baby brother was to be born. The more she pushed him away, the more he wanted her. So she switched mind sets and therefor, strategies . Any time he so much looked her way, she offered to nurse him. He was thrilled and nursed close to non stop for a few day. Then a funny thing happened. He started saying no. He was soon weaned. She then told a story of her older son. After a hard year filled with divorce and moving homes, he was wanting to sleep with her. For a while she said no, then agreed to every other night. Then she said he was welcome in her bed any time. Drastic things happened. He was happier during the day and did bet...

Today was one of "those" days. Everyone was up earlier than usual and, like usual , Matt is out of town, in Hawaii no less. The first words out of Addilyns mouth were "hungry, mama, eat". Annabelle was hungry too, so I poured both big girls bowl of cereal and went up stairs to nurse the baby. I soon heard giggling, the type where you know nothing good is happening. I hollered a warning down the stairs. Then I heard "dump it all out, Addilyn ". Crap. This was trouble. I cut baby Belle short and went downstairs to find that Addilyn had been using her spoon as a catapult for cereal and bits of milk. While not participating in the naughtiness , Eliana had been encouraging it. Cereal and milk were everywhere. I took breakfast away and handed out paper towles . I sent the girls upstairs to do the following: get dressed, put away books and pick up doll house items. All three tasks could easily have been completed in 15 minutes . 2 hours later none of the ab...

I had an interesting conversation about family the other day with a lovely Pakistany woman. She had 6 children of her own and grew up in a family of 16 children. When I asked her if she was going to have that many, she replied that our culture doesn't support that. In her country, generations live together, the 16 children were by 2 wives, and extended family is close by to help. I was relaying this conversation to a few of my friends at play group and we decided we should all just get a big house and live together. All of our husbands travel a good deal and we have 8 kids between us. We laughed about how much easier it would be to share work and life instead of doing it all our own. Apparently we are not the first to think of this. http://www.mothering.com/green-living/cohousing-it-takes-village-raise-child http://www.cohousing.org/ Cohousing . It was a new term to me. I think it goes past my current level of crunchyness into flat our hippy - dom , conjuring up images of commun...

When I am sleep deprived I have a hard time focusing while reading books, so needless to say I haven't picked up a anything more than a magazine in several months. I was missing my good literature and ,to prevent my brain from completely rotting out of my head, have been on a reading frenzy for a few weeks. This is what I have read: The Last Lecture :Yes, I know this is a mans reflection on his life during his last days, but still it seems a little... narcissistic . He thinks he is funnier and smarter than he really is. Even still, I did enjoy the book, it was a quick read. Just have some tissues and know it doesn't really end well. A Million Little Pieces : Critically acclaimed and an Oprah's Book Club choice. It scared the pants off of me and it isn't meant to be a scary book. This kid starts drinking at age 12 and everything goes down hill from there until he is in rehab at age 24. His body is in terrible shape and he details his rehab experience . Why is it ...

Read this . How did we get here? When did church become this? Are we really too good to meet in homes like the early church did? I am pretty sure if I invited people to come over and meet some of my friends over beer and bbq vs. inviting them to come to church I would have a lot more sign up for the bbq . Ugh. I know just because we are Christians doesn't mean we are above being sucked into the lie that bigger and newer is better, it just feels so icky to me.

Before I became a mother, I was a wonderful parent, full of ideas of what I would do and, more importantly, never do. On the "never" list was bribery. My children would obey me out of respect and preservation of there back sides, not because the got something out of the deal. My children wouldn't ever be the ones laying in the aisle of Target screaming bloody murder. Ahhh reality, sometimes such a bitter pill. With a few year of parenting under my belt, this is the conclusion I have came to: there is a difference between bribing and compensating or rewarding. Grown ups work for compensation. We have an agreed upon amount that we work for and know that if we fail to do our work, we cease getting compensated. Its called employment. We don't things simply because we want them or refuse to cooperate without them. For children I believe the difference between the two is similar. I can say " I will be serving cookies to all children who have there toys put away by the ...

Friday- Ok , so Friday isn't really the "weekend" yet, I am fudging a little. Friday morning I went to the last session of my Beth Moore "Esther" study. I have liked the study, stay tuned for a book report. In the afternoon, the Osness children came over. We attempted to put all 5 children down for a nap and only successfully got 3 sleeping at any one time. They were all good, though, and I love having the opportunity to spend time with my niece and nephew. Saturday-Saturday morning Grace came over to play while her Mom and dad packed up a moving truck. We packed up a lunch and took Grace over to her new house (which is beautiful) and enjoyed lunch with our families. I brought the Crocker girls home for a nap and Matt stayed to be some additional muscle . That evening we headed over to the first McCrady -Q of the season. We are so blessed to have such a great community of friends. We enjoyed some amazing steaks, great conversation and a couple of grown-up be...

I have several friends who are expecting babies any day now. This is what I made for one of them, it is a travel changing pad. I am not a fan of diaper bags and this is a nice alternative . The top picture is the changing pad all rolled up and the bag I made to carry it in, the bottom picture is it unrolled. I need to make myself one now!

Here are a few egg hunting pictures, because I promised. The girls looked great (at least at the begining of the day) in there Easter dresses. I think that is one of my favorite things about being a mama to little girls, all the fun dresses. Too bad our chuch is not the dress up type, guess they will just have to look cute on random Tuesdays or something. I am pretty sure the best egg hunting is done in pretty dresses. While we are on the topic of eggs, I want to share another fab recipie for a meatless dinner. I am loving these quick and easy eggs dishes as of late. This one you have to try, it is so fast! You can have dinner on the table in under 30 minuites . Tomatoe Baked Eggs 1/2 small chopped onion 2 cans of Italian tomatoes (I used ones we canned from last summer and they were sooooo good!) Garlic to taste (which at our house means A LOT of garlic) 8 eggs 1/2 cup Italian cheese 1 tsp. Italian seasoning salt and pepper Preheat oven to 350. Grab your favorite oven proo...

Saturday night the Easter Bunny came early and brought us all...wait for it... THE STOMACH FLU! We thought it might just be food poisoning because only Matt and Elie were struck down that night. Elie was ready to rock for Easter the next day...Matt not so much. So I put the girls in there Easter frills and off to church we went, leaving Matt to sleep it off. I wasn't feeling great, but I had been up with a sick kid the night before and just chalked it up to lack of sleep. We came home from church, put the girls down for naps and got everything ready to head over to my sisters later that afternoon. The girls awoke and off we went to eat appetizers and hunt eggs. The kids had a great time but Addilyn was in a mood. By Easter night Addilyn , Baby Belle and I were all sick. And of course, Matt left for CA early this morning. I do believe we are on the road to recovery. I stayed in my PJ's all day and drank lots of tea but hope to be doing better tomorrow. I also continued to do ...

I wondered if maybe dying Easter eggs with a 2 and 4 year old was a terrible idea. After all, Addilyn trashes at least one outfit a day with out the benefit of dye. Eliana knocks over at least a few glasses of milk a week. I went for it any way and I am glad to say we had a very nice time. Yes, several fingers looked liked they had been slammed in a door repeatedly due to excessive exposure to egg dye, but no clothing was ruined. The girls have been enjoying the "pretty eggs" for breakfast the last few day. I do believe a new tradition has been started.

I have never really considered myself a "type A" person. I am not obsessed about details (as can be seen by the fact I didn't take the time to flip this picture) and generally live in a world of "good enough". I am not a finisher which would be obvious to anyone sitting in my dining room surrounded by unfinished sewing projects. I feel like I am fairly self aware, I know my (many) weaknesses of character and can even name a few things that I am not to bad at. I was completely caught off guard when my husband told me this week that I was controlling. I don't feel controlling and I have never really thought of myself this way before. My world, though not quite rocked, was defiantly jiggled. This comment came after I spent the evening achieving what is pictured above. My spices have been bugging me for a while. I love to cook and bake and have a microscopic kitchen that is often inhabited by 3 small children and 2 large dogs in addition to myself and somet...

I am pretty sure Eliana has a new favorite holiday, or it would be her favorite if it somehow included candy and presents or at least a cake. A few days ago, I told Eliana that today would be April Fools day and explained what that means. She has been looking forward to it all week. So far she has jumped out of the closet to scare Matt and added ice cubes to my coffee. She is beyond tickled by the whole thing. Last year I added an extra baby to my pregnancy "ticker" so it looked like I was having twins. This year I can't think of anything funny or even remotely clever to do so I have decided to educate you instead. If you want to read about some people who are funny, click Here . "April Fools' Day, sometimes called All Fools' Day, is one of the most light-hearted days of the year. Its origins are uncertain. Some see it as a celebration related to the turn of the seasons, while others believe it stems from the adoption of a new calendar. Ancient cultures, in...