God is LOVE

"in my mind, the essence of the gospel is love. everything else–and i mean everything–is secondary to love.

in matthew 22:37-40, when the lawyer asks christ to identify the most important commandment, jesus answers: thou shalt love the lord thy god with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. this is the first and great commandment. and the second is like unto it, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

in romans 13:8,10 we learn to “owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. . . . love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.” and galatians 5:14 reiterates the idea: “for all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” it seems very clear to me that to love will naturally lead to living christ’s teachings, to living a christlike life.

the scriptures also make it clear that love is the avenue to knowing god and thereby gaining eternal life. john 3:16 teaches us that “god so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” and john 17:3 clarifies that eternal life is to know god and jesus christ. 1 john 4:8 clarifies that he that loveth not knoweth not god because god is love."


Thank you, Amelia...for putting words to feelings I find it hard to express. I feel so clear about my goals today after reading this.

May 2009- Six Flags, Boston, Plymouth & NYC

Here we are again! It's our last trip for the school year. For the week in May we did some really fun stuff. From Friday to Friday our family walked 60 miles. How did we do it you ask?

Well, day one- Homeschool Day at Six Flags Over Georgia.

Day two- fly to Boston, MA and walk "The Freedom Trail" all over town.

Day three- finish the trail, tour the "USS Constitution", drive to Plymouth, MA and walk around the Wampanoag Village, Plimoth Plantation & the Mayflower II then drive to NYC.

Day four- Wake up in NYC and keep freaking out about meeting Phil from the "Amazing Race" and then ride the elevator with him to breakfast!!! Ok, enough about Phil. Take the subway to Battery Park and ride the ferry to Liberty Island & Ellis Island. Walking tour of "Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World" (which, we learned, is her full name). Walk back to hotel by way of Ground Zero after our moment of silence.

Day five- Walk to Central Park Zoo, FAO Schwartz and back down to Times Square.

Day six- Again...walk over to Pier 86 where the Intrepid Museum is. For lunch the girls & I walked across town to The American Girl store and the boys walked to Times Square. Back to the hotel to rest and then off to the park and back to American Girl for our SECOND exchange...Jewel's decision making skills are a work-in-progress :)

Day seven- Our last full day. We wimped out of walking 30 blocks to the American Museum of Natural History and took the subway. To make up for it we wandered all over the 4 floors of the museum for 5 hours. Following a 2 hour nap we walked up to Times Square to get our last NYC dinner. Did you know that the Olive Garden is in the median of Broadway? We literally ate in the middle of the road. Look behind us in the pic...those are people walking on the sidewalk!

We had a fabulous time and hope to go back one day. We'll be home for a while now and are looking forward to a lazy summer vacation. Yeah, right. I can dream though! I think it's about time to venture west...who's up for a trip to the Grand Canyon? Write to us or comment on our blog and let us know what you and your family is up to.

Love, The Cross Country Cochrans

PS- Sorry some of the pics are turned....the software won't let me rotate them.

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Time to catch up

Hi guys! Sorry that it's taken me so long to get these pictures posted. Life is crazy hectic around here and I have a feeling that it's just going to get worse. I mean, we do have a pre-teen in our house now:) So, to catch you up-

We took a NJ trip for Jewel because she didn't want to be without her Dad on her 9th birthday. This year in school we have been studying American History and we just finished our book on the War of 1812. Since we were going to be driving through Maryland we decided to check out the most important fort of the war- Fort McHenry & the Bombardment of Baltimore. We had a facinating day there. On normal weekends they reinact the War of 1812 but the weekend we were there it was Civil War- oh well! The kids ran all over the fort looking for answers on their quiz to become National Park Junior Rangers. They learned first hand all about how Francis Scott Key wrote the Star Spangled Banner in the harbor.

After spending the week swimming at the pool we were ready to head home. But not so fast- we stopped off in Washington, DC to check out the American History Museum! The original Star Spangled Banner is housed there. Photographs are not allowed in the exhibit but it was well worth the stopover. Since the Natural History Museum is right next door....we checked it out too.

More pictures to come...enjoy!

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We weren't eliminated!!!!!

For those of you who do not know- we are HUGE Amazing Race fans. Bryan and I have been watching religiously for years and this season the kids have enjoyed our obsession with us. As we are traveling this week we are missing a couple of our favorite season finales. By chance we thought we might make it to our New York hotel in time to catch the finale of Amazing Race tonight. No luck though. The kids were bummed but cool because they know we've got it DVRed at home. As we checked into the Marriott- Times Square Lara was in the way of someone getting off the elevator pushing a large cart. I'm looking at the guy and....yeah, I recognize that guy. Yep- that's Phil. It's freaking Phil, the host of Amazing Race. He leaned over and told Lara thank you for moving out of the way. Then....we found out from the front desk that they did the finale here in NYC tonight and the host and crew are staying in the hotel!! Can you stand it??? This show is something we love to look forward to. We've even joked about signing up. :) To top it all off- Phil is staying in the room next door to us! Ahhhhhh!!!! Woo-hoo! He was coming back to his room and I just happened to be in the hall- yeah, right I just happened to be in the hall for 20 minutes waiting for him to come back to his room- and I got the guts to speak to him. I told him "we just drove down from Boston trying to get here in time to see the finale on tv and that we missed it." He goes, "Oh that sucks! You just missed it....well I won't tell you who won then." The kids came out and Bryan too...and I said, "No, please don't...we'll watch it when we get home." And Phil says..."Well, even though you were the last ones to get to the hotel...you're not eliminated because this is non-elimination round. Good luck!" Holy crap....we were all screaming when we closed the door...the kids were FREAKING out....ok, so it wasn't the kids...it was me!! We've only been in NYC for 30 minutes and how cool is that??!! We're off to the Statue of Liberty tomorrow.

Sandy Hook, NJ & Charlottesville, VA

We had a great time on our most recent trip up north. While Bryan was working the kids and I went off to explore the New Jersey coastline. The Sandy Hook lighthouse at Fort Hancock was our first stop. Fort Hancock was occupied by British Loyalists to ensure British entry into New York Harbor during the Revolutionary War. Then on the way home we stopped off to check out the Twin Lighthouses on the Navesink River overlooking New York Harbor. Reed's birthday dinner was the following day. He asked for sushi and Bryan's co-workers told us about a fabulous place called Redheads. Yummy! On our trip home to Georgia we stopped off in Charlottesville, Virginia to visit Thomas Jefferson's plantation- Monticello. What a beautiful day. The kids had a great time...especially Jewel who answered every one of our tour guides questions before any of the adults in our group. She loves Thomas Jefferson! Enjoy the pics...and more to come as the "Cross Country Cochrans" share our spring 2009 travels with ya'll.

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Family Day

The weather was amazing and the company couldn't have been better. We spent Saturday with our cousins- Chuck & Barbara Ann Price. We are anxiously awaiting the arrival of their first baby. The food was delicious and we played at the park and games until they sent us packing late into the night! Thanks for a great day Chuck & Barbara! We love you!

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Workout Journal #2

The workouts have been tough. Really tough. By that I mean tough to keep up with. By that I mean I stopped working out. I'm ready to workout but I just don't make the time. Ya'll know I hate exercising- I'm not good at it and sports aren't good for my self-esteem (as a great friend told me last night). I'll keep moving around and making better food choices- which is what I have to do in order to loose weight without exercising. We're making the switch to organic foods....it's been a struggle to commit to it with money issues and food prices going up but I feel better about eating when the foods are organic. I'll let you know how we do.

There's nothing new going on around my house lately. We're busy with our sports and dancing schedules. Bryan's still traveling for work and amazingly we haven't gone with him since October. I think this is the longest we've gone staying at home for almost 2 years. Time seems to be flying by and in a few short weeks Reed will be turning 12. That brings changes that I'm not quite ready for. Springtime starts our busy season with family celebrations and we are excited to have the 4th cousin join in the April birthday club. This April we'll have a 12, a 9, a 2 and a newborn cousin.

The beautiful weather we've been enjoying this week has inspired my weightloss renewal AGAIN. I feel so tired all the time but the pleasant breeze that comes through my house has lifted me up out of my slump and got me going. There's just something about being outside that makes me happy. Now, my husband would disagree that I'm an outside girl- he's only known me as the one who'd rather stay inside. That change in me only happened after I had kids....now that the kids are older and it's not so much work to be outside with them....I find it invigorating not exhausting to be out there with them. I called my hubby today and told him I don't want to go through another summer without a table and chairs for our deck. I'm ready to sacrafice a few things to get my family eating fresh from the grill more and enjoying the outdoors. Now, I'm not giving up getting my hair done, or my nails done....or a dinner out once in a while so what am I going to sacrafice? Well, maybe he can sacrafice something instead;)

Happy Spring!!!