GENIUS BABY

Ms. Pinkness Gloriousness

Eric finally gets a crib!

Mountain Man

SKI

William starts the party

Snowshoeing

Christmas 2009 (this post is upside down!)

Um, even the dog seemed to enjoy the celebrations. All other pictures of adults from 6:30 am Christmas morning have been omitted due to the very unusual styles of hair and dress.

...and everybody enjoyed a first Christmas ever... in Wyoming.

One member of the family enjoyed his first Christmas ever.

The children were asking, just yesterday, when Christmas is coming again.

Santa came! He drives a mini van and uses Amazon.com.

Christmas tree in the front window.

Every stocking, I mean *EVERY SINGLE STOCKING* was hung all over the hallway with care.

The Hartman-McCrea family has grown in size! This year, everyone came to make our new house feel like a home.

First Annual McCrea Christmas Eve Party

In keeping with tradition, we sat around and waited for the guests to arrive.

Slowly, they did! And then we had so many guests that we have a whole series of terrible candid photos of people talking or eating! It was fun, but should not be remembered with those photos!

We were thinking of the Richey-Hartman clan.

I think we put the new old plate to good use.

Check out the Grandpa McCrea hand-crafted cherry wood table which will hopefully come straight back to us this spring!

Back-Blogging

Over Christmas break, Sean's brother Mike and his girlfriend Karen joined Sean, Uncle Matt, and William on the slopes. William really enjoyed being included in the big-kid activities and Uncle Matt, no doubt, made an extra effort to be a bad example. (:^)

Driving in Wyoming

...and the NEXT TIME the roads are bad, don't get the camera out while you are driving, cowboy!

William is an amazing ski dude. It makes his mother proud. It makes his mother SCARED.

Eric makes the whole family so happy!

Margaret the Brave

Before the Party

Four adults worked to make our house look beautiful for the faculty party last week.  Sean and I hung pictures and finished moving in, someone else occupied the children, while a fourth woman cleaned the house. The results were totally worth it. Sean thought we should probably take pictures for when we wanted to look at our clean house again....

Talking to Ineke on the phone before the party!

Sankt Nikolaustag in Wyoming

Lucky for us, he got our address change on time!

Breakfast with Santa

Laramie has an annual breakfast with Santa.  Pancakes and bacon, arts and crafts, and the opportunity to sit on Santa's lap and speak with him about your material desires. Margaret the brave was pushed ahead to first by her brother, William the hesitant.

William was prepared, and braver this year, however! He presented Santa with an offering, his best artwork, and told Santa what he wanted. Come to find out, this child has been praying to Santa morning and night for a HORRIBLE present which I will not mention here because I don't want the in-law Santas getting it for him.  It would seriously put me over the edge. (He wants a type of rodent.)

Even Eric sat on Santa's lap!

The children the worked very hard on a series of Christmas ornaments, most of which now adorn our tree.  The parental favorite award goes to William's series of bright yellow snowmen.  He just didn't understand why they made us giggle.

For Beeba, the Denver Zoo!

Andy and me, our husbands, and our FIVE children at the Denver zoo on the glorious day of her father's retirement from Tropical Discovery.

Things to do in Denver!

It was a beautiful warm day in Denver.  We went down to visit Andy and Gabe and family Thanksgiving weekend.  Andrea had the brilliant idea of bringing bikes so the kids could ride around.  Now that we live in America and have a jumbo-mobile, we were easily able to pack an extra few bicycles in our spacious and luxurious trunk.

Margaret excelled on the tricycle - on the way out.  For the way back, Sean had to rig up a trike-pull using his belt to drag her home.

Andy and Gabe live in this wonderland of things-to-do! At least, that's how it feels when you've been in Laramie, WY for a few months! Next stop was the butterfly pavillion.  Which had more than just butterflies!

We've SEEN butterflies! Let's play with tarantulas!

And gigantic cockroaches!

Thanksgiving in the Wild West

This is what a Thanksgiving turkey in Wyoming looks like.  Notice the bucking bronco brand.

We celebrated this year with a lovely family from Hamburg-via-Iowa.

And two men from Camaroon.

...and Eric had his first mashed sweet potato, mashed turkey, and mashed corn dinner.

The lego-inventions keep getting more complicated.

William wanted me to take a picture of this one so he could reconstruct it later.

Family Ski

We got some used downhill and crosscountry skis for the kids, so this afternoon we decided to practice in the front yard and in the park across the street. There was a lot of falling over, a lot of replacing mittens, and some moments of lying on the back, refusing to go on.  Glad the skis were inexpensive, and glad we didn't have to go far to practice today.

Local Headlines

Here are all four headlines from the front page of today's local newspaper, which is called the "Boomerang", by the way...

1. "Federal Judge Asked to End Yellowstone Bison Kills"
2. "Wyoming Makes Argument for Managing Wolves"
3. "Former Student Convicted for Threatening Others" (with a knife)
4. "Suspect's Vehicle Runs Out of Gas"