Colorado Crockers

I am an incredibly half-assed homeschooler. By all measurable standards, I really suck. I have no curriculum. I have almost no lesson plans to show, the ones I do have I didn't follow. I don't have a pile of completed work sheets or cutesy everyone-made-the-same snowman/butterfly/Dr. Suess item. If I was a public school teacher, I would be fired. Most days we have no set schedule , no plan, no action items to cross off a list. We drift, dig, sing, smash, color, exist , clean up and do it all again the next day. I read about my friends/blogs I stalk and how excited they are to get a brand new set of curriculum for next year. I get my hopes up and click the inevitable link to the site and imminently feel the too tight itchy wool sweater feeling. I want to like a prepackaged set of learning materials, it would be so neat and all linear and such...but instead it just feels contrived and claustrophobic . While I suck at home schooling, it isn't due to lack of opinions on chi

The other night we had company for dinner. I had 3 dessert choices, which Matt said was excessive. Whatever. It isn't my fault that he doesn't like cherries and so I had to make flourless chocolate cake with almonds and ganache for him. The baby wanted black forest brownies and I just happened to have blueberry cheesecake on hand from the day or two before. Anyway, our guest was expecting too, and twins at that! It isn't my fault I burned my tongue on the hot-out-of-the oven pina colada cake. It smelled soooo good and the baby said he needed a bite RIGHT NOW. And who am I to say no to a little guy who is just trying his best to grow and get fat? What kind of mother would I be? I spend a majority of time in yoga pants, which I should not be blamed for. After all, if the makers of maternity clothing understood how hard it is to keep pants on a round belly, maybe they would be a little more innovative . And my pants always feel tight...maybe it is the dessert options at my hou

I am a firm believer that God uses whatever He deems necessary to help us grow. Have you ever noticed today's Christians dependence on the bible and other church programs for growth? But if you look in the bible, none of those guys had the bible to grow with, they were forced to keep hearts and mind open to hearing God however He spoke into there lives. Yes, I know they had the old testament, but very few had written copies and the fact that women were completely illiterate and rarely tough didn't keep God from using them. Sometimes I wonder if we are a little too dependent on showing up to a nice, air conditioned building, sitting in our cushy chairs and listening to a guy who has boiled down all the biblical knowledge he decided we need to know into a nice, neat 3 point outline or fill in the blank workbook. I don't go to church. Not here in Jersey. Sure, we could "church shop" until we found a "fit" but I hate that consumerism to the point I just can

"No Way!" The look of shock and awe on their faces was priceless . I had just told my babysitter and her friend that the baby-in-belly would wake me up at night with his hick-ups. Here stood two beautiful girls, with bodies of women, who in some parts of the world would be mothers instead of high school students, completely unaware of what it means to have a person growing inside you. I can home that night and talked with Matt about the experience, trying to figure out why it left me feeling sad. Matt, though admittedly out of his range of expertise , listened with the heart of a man who has daughters. And this is what I came up with; we lost it somewhere. We lost the magic, the power of what it means to be a woman. Are little girls told what amazing things their bodies are? My body has the ability to grow a whole person from just a few cells. This person has a heart beat, arms and legs, can swim around in my belly, all before anyone in the outside world would know they exi

Just finished reading this (side note: LOVE the Kindle app on my phone. It lets me read my book anywhere I am and I can switch to reading it on the ipad and it remembers my place. And Matt and I can read the same book at the same time!) If you have ever been interested in the peace corp or Africa or midwives or just like good stories, I enjoyed this book immensely . Not a hard read and it keeps my life in perspective!

Life at the Crocker house has been plugging along nicely. Matt didn't travel hardly at all in February and it was so nice to have him around. And then his boss quit. Oy. As often as not, my husband is now coming home frazzled, stressed, overwhelmed and feeling like he just can't keep up. He is doing the work of several people, basically managing 1 billion dollars of business. His travel schedule is now booked from now until this baby shows up and he still is going to be behind. Maybe even another trip to Korea. The guys is stretched thin. When he comes home from work, the man is mobbed by small females who are pretty sure he hung the moon. My girls LOVE daddy time and Matt usually manages to rise to the occasion. By the time the girls are in bed the guy is done. It would be so easy to turn on the television and ignore each other for the rest of the night until we stumble into bed. And sometimes we do. Some days we can rally. Matt brews a pot of decaf, I bake some cookies, we