O joy!

Uncle Mike and Karen are engaged! The happiest news! The most joyous of things! We are so extremely thrilled for the couple and for ourselves!

We're Cooked!

Oh no! I just signed the family up for a Thanksgiving fundraising event called "Turkey Curling". It has to be a team of four and you are supposed bring your own Swiffer (tm). You are supposed to "curl" a turkey across the ice. Costumes optional. Babies in backpacks ok! Double elimination! Our first match is at 1:00 Mountain Time. Beeba is traveling all the way from Bloomington to see this event, but she doesn't know it yet! HA! Luckily, we have a Swiffer in the closet that is in mint condition. Our team name is "We're Cooked!". Wish us luck!!

The Snow Came! 11/9/10

The SNOW has come. And I think it's here to stay. Yesterday we got 6-8 inches and it's going to stay cold and keep snowing about every other day for the rest of the extended forecast. When William saw the snow he got all excited and started pretending to ski all over the house. When Eric saw the snow outside, he said "UH-OH". Margaret was excited to make snow angels.

After a long process of getting everyone dressed, we headed outside to play in the snow and find certain things like the cars and the stairs to the house.

After a fun play, we came back in and completed our new FIRST REAL SNOW ritual.

We expressed out excitement!

And ate snow with maple syrup! YUM! I also made them hot cocoa! Welcome, first snow.

Sankt Martinstag Gaenze - biscuits?

This year I went to William's classroom and told the story of Sankt Martin, which I felt delivered a lovely socialist message right after the elections. ( If you can't remember the story of Sankt Martin,the knight who shares his cape with a cold and hungry man, see November 2007 post). We sang some songs in German, showed a relevant you-tube video of children looking for him with lanterns, and then I served little breads in the shape of geese. The kids were very kind about the goose biscuits, and not one of them declared, as my husband did, that they strongly resemble embryos. Ahem. Of course, when I looked up the recipe for real Gaense-Broetchen the night before...it involved quark. And although I have now found an amazing shop in town which sells all kinds of cool foods including Appenzeller Kaese so authentic (stinky) that when I heated it up at work for lunch I got all kinds of commentary and a nurse following me around with a can of Lysol, I still haven't found quark (dairy product) to make my goose bread with. This is how traditions morph and change with time and location. But I did tell the story, I did sing the songs, and the breads were pretty okay.

Halloween Season Continues

Sean is great about designing cool faces and carving pumpkins with the kids. My tasks are taking the photos, containing the mess, and cooking up the pumpkin seeds.

Eric scooped out his little pumpkin...

...and saved the seeds for Mama.

The artist at work.

William and Margaret "at work".

A few days later, it's time to go to the downtown trick-or-treating event. This Bavarian drives a gigantic white minivan.

In the minivan, there's a princess with her basket on her head,

...a ninja, and a Wyoming Cowboy's basketball player who is sitting around picking his nose ( just like the football team!).

One of the stores downtown was giving out free coffee. We took some. It was the worst coffee EVER, but we were grateful to have it.

Trick-or-treating "safe" American style. All you have to do is dress up and have your parents drive you downtown in their minivan. Then, you hold out your basket. If you are too shy to say "trick-or-treat" or "thank you", it doesn't matter. Go to the next store and get some more.

We ran in to lots of people we know and Sean and I did a little looking around the ski shop.

I kept missing a marching band or some sort of music.

It was a sunny , warm day and "lots" of people were downtown this year. Everyone who wasn't here was at the tailgate for the football game later in the afternoon. It's fall in Laramie.

Sugared up and ready to go home, I realized I didn't have a picture of Sean and I together in out hilarious outfits. (We found it only fitting to take the picture in front of the recycling bins, since while in Germany we had spent about 50% of our waking hours working on our recycling. ) I asked William to take a picture of us. The first try, he didn't get our heads.

William, I am *so* sorry that this is what your parents look like looking down on you! I want you to know that we are saving up for counseling for you and your siblings!!

And finally, here is a picture of an "addition" I made to my costume. The shoes I wore on my feet and they were authentic. The socks I wore somewhere else, and they were *not* authentic! :)
Ho Narro!

A Day in the Life, Part Two - Getting to Work

After we wake up, it's breakfast time! I've showered and had some coffee, hurrying while the rest of the family is asleep. The favorite breakfast right now is frozen waffles with eggs or Morningstar sausages and fruit from our farm share. A nice, balanced combo of packaged foods and simple sugars, meat substitutes, and whole organic foods: the breakfast of my champions! I try to make breakfast count since the kids say they get hungry during the day. Margaret is still pouting since it's morning. William is ready to go!

After a little breakfast, Margaret joins the day.

After a little breakfast, William is already completely goofy. Eric must have already eaten and is now wandering around the house trying to put entire rolls of toilet paper in the toilet or something similar.

While the kids eat, I pack my breakfast and my lunch. It's too stressful to eat with the family in the morning. I'd rather eat at my desk these days!

I try to find some appropriate work clothes, sorting though my closet which is now full of Halloween costumes. This is the time in the morning when I leave the light in the bedroom on, trying to get Sean out of bed. This is also right around the time I start nagging him to" Hurry up and help me, I'm going to be late to work!!!" He has heard this before, so there is generally no great effect. " Ya, Ya!", he grumbles.

Sean gets up and drinks a cup of coffee with the kids while I finish getting ready. By this time I'm moving faster and faster around the house doing last-minute pick up, dressing occasional children, finding my keys, oh, maybe I'll just start the laundry really quick, William do you have your lunch, Sean will you set out their jackets, don't forget this, don't forget that, I told you yesterday what the plan was, do you really still not know? I'll send you an e-mail because I have to GO! I'm going to be LAAAATTTEEE!

But then, bittersweet relief, I leave the house and go get my bike in the garage. Glenn organized our garage for us last month, but it didn'tentirely stick.

I convince my husband to take a picture of me starting off on my morning commute. Sometimes I walk to work, and call a friend in a more advanced timezone. But today I'm running late, so I'm riding my bike.

I wave "goodbye" to the children. Like the Halloween decorations? It's just a sticker, bloggers, don't get excited!

I ride to work, park my bike, and approach the side door of Student Health. I don't go in the front because it says "Cheney International Center" . That's a rough way to start the morning- and it's farther away from the bike rack.

The campus is really pretty this time of year, and surprisingly not yet covered in snow!

Here's my desk. I have a laptop which I bring into patient rooms with me, and a desktop so I can look things up, monitor my schedule, check my e-mail, glance at the New York Times, and play music on Pandora if I get bored of charting. Lots of ways to procrastinate, but if I procrastinate too much I don't get to go home to my children on time...so I generally keep it under control. Like my Muppets mousepad? According to my students, the mousepad is so "retro" that it is "cool" again. I'm not so sure I care what an 18 year old thinks is cool anymore, since 36 is *SO* much better, but I do find it amusing to get this type of comment!

I still have this old-fashioned day planner bigger than a house. ( And check out that telephone that has a cord on it! Budget student health office!!! Oh, and check out that PRINTER...it's very very large! ) I leave my planner in my office and keep the plans for one or two days in my head. This leads to some mistakes, and only that which is important gets remembered. Sean and I coordinate schedules day-of and over e-mail. It's complicated and sometimes left to chance with so many schedules

Thanks to Oma, I have some great photos of my children in my office now. I love it when my patients are shocked to hear I have three children! I think this is funny. I am also shocked!

Desk drawer, where I found the camera several days later.

This is one of my two patient rooms. I have one general exam room, and one devoted almost entirely to gynecologic issues. The nurses and I call it the "sex room", but not in front of patients. The exam rooms are small and, although recently rennovated, totally out of style. I need to work on putting some nice posters in them. I couldn't figure out why I had a large bruise on each thigh until I realized that I was hitting one thigh on the supply cabinet on the way in the room and the other thigh on the supply cabinet on the way out! I keep hoping I'll learn not to do that soon!

I'm trying to take a picture of "Doctor Hartman" in the mirror! Those blue things on the shelf are "barf bags". Nice.

Here are my credentials, my shrine to myself, my dust collection, my storage location for bulky diplomas I'd prefer not to have in my closet. I straightened the frames up after I took the picture!

Then my first patient of the day came and I stored my camera in my desk drawer, only to find it several days later.

A Day in the Life, Part One - Early Morning

Read this post from the bottom up! Part of the "Day in the Life" is that I accidentaly posted on my blog upside down!



The boys and I are morning people. Then there's Margaret and Sean....they are NOT morning people. This is, in fact, the better of the two pictures I took of Margaret this morning. Seriously folks! She is beautiful every other time of the day, but morning is just not her thing. Sean is represented by the lump under the white comforter. The children have jumped on the bed to snuggle with Dada. The day is beginning. Then it took off and I forgot to take any more pictures. See you tomorrow!

William usually heads for the purple couch when he wakes up.

Here is the limiting agent, once he's up the rest of the family is up! Look at the thrilled grin as he attempts to steal my alarm clock. It's nice to get up to this little guy's grin.

It's 7am by the time I remember to take a picture of the clock...still, that's a pretty good morning of sleeping in here at Chez McCrea!

My fellow bloggers, the bloomingtonaughts, theKrentzfamily, and temporary librarian have been doing "A Day in the Life" posts. What a brilliant idea! I find it somehow telling that I have been trying to work on this post for four days, and I have only gotten to about 10am. Then I forget about the camera. So this post will be more like a snapshot from each time of day, over several days. We start off on a weekend morning. Each day now starts with coffee. It is so warm and so comforting and we are so addicted to our 2 cups of "half-caffeine" coffee!!!

Eric and Marga