Colorado Crockers

I swear to you, if Eliana asks me one more time "how long until Halloween?" I might just duct tape the calendar to her forehead. We have counted the days, looked on the calendar and yet she still feels the need to ask several times a day. I find it irritating that Halloween is so controversial in the Christian community. As if THAT is the "hill to die on". A holiday where children celebrate by playing pretend and eating candy evokes such a strong emotion and ends up making Christians look like petty idiots. World poverty? The orphan crisis? No sir, it's a 5 year old dressed like Mickey and Snickers that we get all up in arms about. In our family we handle Halloween differently than many people do. I am a firm believer that some of our reactions to things we don't agree with often stem from fear driven by a lack of knowledge. In our house, we talk about Halloween a long time ago. How the Celtic people of long ago celebrated there new year on November 1st alon...

I am a mediocre homeschooler. I don't have a time of day when we put on our "school hat" and sit and do worksheets. I consider making pancakes math for the day. We are reading Charlotte's Web together and that is vocabulary. Science is usually when we google something, often pictures of what new baby is looking like today. Or when we find an exceptional worm in the back yard and Eliana wonders why she can see through him so we grab our magnifying glass. We do practice handwriting but I have yet to do anything about the face Eliana is confusing b,d and p,q, she will figure it out. The other day Eliana informed me that she was the mom and I was the babysitter. She was going out for a nice dinner with her friends and it was just for grown-ups and it was my job to watch the babies. She then handed me my babysitting instructions. Just in case you don't read 5 year old, let me write it in "grown up": Be home at 1o at first feed them Dinner then clean up Then p...

It occured to me that I have never posted pictures of our house. Or at least not the inside. Sorry for the random order, I put them in a normal order and blogger shuffled them all around. So you are starting in our upstairs hallway. To the left goes downstairs and the stairway to the right goes up to the attic and guest room. This is Eliana and Addilyn's bedroom. Not a great picture. Bigger than there room in Colorado with lots of floor room to play and almost NO closest. Not great for two little girls with a TON of dresses. Our room. Also not much closet space. I use under the bed roller drawers for some of my stuff and you can see a closet rack for Matt to the right for Matt's stuff. Annabelle's room. Very tiny but somehow just right for her. A very large closet to the right of the rocker that we use for...well...everything. Linnins, extra bathrooms stuff, nice dishes, it all ends up in that closet because it is the ONLY closet. This is the view from the front door if you...

A few weekends ago we decided to celebrate like the Germans and ring in the fall with Oktoberfest! We drove up the Palisades parkway, enjoying the view, into New York and to Bear Mountain State park. The day was cool, but beautiful. The park was full. The beer was good (so I hear) and the German Food was...well Germans are not exactly known for there food, now are they. A great day was had by all. Matt with his "who drank my beer?!" face.

I didn't write this, not sure who did, but it totally captures how I feel. Dear Women's Ministry: The world can give me cute cupcake designs and decorating tips, scrapbooking parties, casserole recipes, and other ways to pass the time. But truly, with my respect and love, may I be honest? If I wanted to learn how to decorate cupcakes, I would take a class in it. If I wanted to be educated on strategies for decorating my home inexpensively from Winners , I would just, you know, go to Winners . Or Pinterest. But I'm here with you tonight because I want what the world cannot give me. We're choking on cutesy things and crafty bits, safe lady topics, and if one more person says that modest is hottest with a straight face, I may throw up. We are hungry for authenticity and vulnerability, not churchified life hacks from lady magazines. Some of us are drowning, suffocating, dying of thirst for want of the cold water of real community. We're trying really hard--after all, we...

Friends. We had a lot of them in Colorado. Mommy friends. Family friends. Friends who are related to us. We were never in want of company, someone to head to the park with, camp with, go on an adventure or just try the new fro yo place. Friends were one of the many reasons it was so hard to leave Colorado. I generally don't have a hard time making friends, or at least acquaintances. In Jersey I have found it a little harder. First of all, many if not most families are two income, meaning moms are not availible during the day. Even MOPS groups meet in the evening. This leaves me and the nanny's at the parks in day time hours. I have nothing against nanny's, having been one, but I don't speak Russian. Or Spanish. The other day I felt as if I stumbled into an episode of "Real Housewives of New Jersey" as I was waiting for Eliana to finish her class at the library. A group of women, thickly accented, discussing things that were just not really part of my life. Fr...

Blogger is being stupid so I haven't been able to up load this video, so here is the link instead. Forgive Annabelle, she is hollering "I see, I see, I see!" because she wants to see the picture on the camera. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jU3GSwtUqRI

I wasn't going to blog about this. It somehow feels deeply personal, though it isn't really. It isn't yet a complete thought in my head, it is still messy and scrambled. Writing sometimes helps...and sometimes doesn't. Consider yourself warned! My dad has this great "mission statement" for his life. He works hours on getting the meaning right, to sum up what he believes into a great statement that encapsulates his life. I love the order of that, the neatness, the ability to bring every other choice under this one statement. I have yet to be able to achieve the same. First, a little bit of theology. This is my thoughts, and I am in no way saying it is "truth" or that you must subscribe to what I think, but I feel a little clarification is necessary before I move on. God created man in His own image. But He didn't stop there, he went on to create woman too, also in his image. He made us different, yet both in HIS image. There is something divine in...