Adventures

 Since blogging, we've been to Germany for a two week visit!

 Eric turned 3 years old and we celebrated at Oma and Grandpa's house with " a chocolate cake with a blue moose on it and balloons", just like he ordered.

 We celebrated April Fool's Day - I tricked the kids by sneaking a drop of three different colors of food coloring in the bottom of their glasses.  Then when I poured the milk, I pretended to use the power of my mind to change the color of the milk.  Impressed even myself!!

 Then we celebrated Margaret's 6th birthday.

 We were still in the April Fool's Day spirit...

 It's been soccer season.  Margaret is playing too, but we don't have pictures yet because Sean has been too busy being her coach to remember! This weekend we'll get pictures of Margaret and her pink soccer cleats.

 Sean participated in his departmental Bowlarama...and his team won! Supergeeks!

 We died Easter eggs !

 We participated in an event in which the kids got to hang out with the REAL Wyoming Cowboys!

 We had dinner at fancy locations...

 We went hiking in the beautiful weather...

And I think that's why I haven't been finding time to blog lately!

Shaving

 I haven't blogged in so long the children are shaving.
Thanks to Beeba who sent the toddler bathtime shaving kit for Eric's birthday!

Brothers

Margski!

Go Cowgirls!

Today Sean took the boys to a Cowgirls game while Margaret and I had a lovely girl's day with Shasta and Elena. Eric cheered hard and passed out in the car on the way home. "Go Cowboy-girls!", he shouted!

Sean!

Eric-ski!

Eric's First Ski!

AMAZING!

Beeba and Eric!

St. Nickolaus!

Sankt Nikolaus still comes to our house! This year, he replaced the boots with NEW boots filled with fruits, sweets, and nuts! He knocked on the back door and left some treats - then he knocked on the front door and left more treats! It was a huge success!

Happy Birthday, Matt!

It was fun to all be together for Uncle Matt's birthday!

Beeba's Pre-Christmas Visit!

Remember early December? Beeba came to visit! Here she is entertaining her peeps.

We all went to a Santa Claus pancake breakfast at the Civic Center.

Everybody still believes, though answering their questions has started to require more creativity!

Margaret gave Santa a big hug and made his day.

Pancakes!

Later that weekend we got a tree!

I played Christmas carols on the piano and we decked the tree! We sang all our favorite German songs and I remembered doing German Chistmas Carol Karaoke at the Kindergarten! Haha!

Merry Pre-Christmas!

All the Christmas photos must be on Glenn and Ineke's camera - our camera was on the fritz and I am not sure I have these photos...

Magic for Granddad

Certainly Not

William: Dada! Dada! GOOD NEWS! I was at Graham's birthday party and we all asked his Magic 8 Ball if we would get married and for everybody else it said "yes" or "maybe", but for me it said, "certainly not"! I was so relieved!

Halloween !

This year we celebrated Halloween officially for four days! And two weeks before that, too. These pictures are from the downtown trick-or-treat, called "Scaramie", on Saturday morning.

It was pretty cool. We saw everybody in the entire town AND we got to ring the bell on a real firetruck! (picture not included)

Me and the fam.

EEW, Sean!

This picture is from this morning - right after they got to Spring Creek Elementary there was an all-school parade! Happy Halloween!

Conversations

Driving home in the dark after Margaret's gymnastics class:

DrHF: Everything looks so different at night, doesn't it Margaret?

Margaret: Well, not the trees or the houses or the stop signs or the cars.

DrHF: Are you saying you disagree?

Margaret: Well, the only thing different about the night is that the sun has set. Everything else stays the same.

DrHF: I guess you're right. :)

Margaret: I see the big dipper! I see the big dipper!

Friend: What is that?

Margaret: It's a series of seven stars that looks like a soup ladle!

William: MAMA! We are missing the most important thing on earth!!!

DrHF: What's that? Love?

William: no

DrHF: food?

William: no

DrHF: shelter?

William: No. We are missing an authentic Cowboys helmet replica!

DrHF: Gotcha.

For Ginny Only

Dear Ginny,

Most of the time I am talking to you, I am standing in the kitchen cooking, doing dishes, or doing weird dance routines with the children. Okay, I usually hang up before the weird dancing begins. You wanted to see the whole room but got only a taste from the last post. Ginny likes details - so if you don't like details, this is not the post for you. I won't be offended! Here is my kitchen in all of its angles! This view is facing the half-bath where Eric potty trained. There is a skinny closet right by the half-bath which borders the garage and is uninsulated - perfect for cold drinks and to keep weird farm share veggies fresh all winter long! Just part of the way down the stairs to the basement is the door to the garage, or "bike storage area". We keep our cars outside - no room in a 1953 single car garage for a 2010 ginormo-minivan. The stairs are carpeted, a beige medium-length shag, so pretty fun to slide down on your butt! Just sayin'.

Okay, turning to the left you can see that when they remodeled the house, they took out part of the wall of the kitchen so it was more open to the stairway. When we first bought the house, we thought it would be a good thing that we could hear the children better as they played in the basement with this design. We have now learned our lesson! The ledge is useful to put things on, like this flashlight that eats batteries and our pile of random scratched up DVDs that are designed for a German player. See also, laundry basket, place where we keep our laptop, and the pile of framed pictures not hung yet - a couple water colors of the Tetons and a couple prints Sean brought back from Sweden. The big painting on the wall is from Holland. Maus, the roommate of Sean's Godmother painted it and a couple other pieces we hang proudly in our house.

Turning left again, you see the dining room in it's naural state. We cleaned up a bit for the last picture! In this picture, we 've got some homework, some junk mail, some pumpkins, etc ! The card that you sent recently is on the counter I am pretty sure! Thank you.

Turning left again, you see our beautiful cabinets, a halloween tree from Beeba, a framed picture from our honeymoon in Canada, a couple bags of Halloween stuff ready to make "Boo bags", etc! Just over the sink is the best feature ever designed: a window overlooking the back yard! Why is it such a delight to do dishes while watching your children play as if they were a TV show?

Turning left again you see the toaster with a piece of toast Margaret toasted and then forgot about, the cutting board Matt gave us for our wedding, a white tray from Sweden, a couple bowls full of farm share fruit, random utensils in a flower pot ( plants died anyway!), quilted potholders from mom's buddies hanging on hooks by Glenn. As I am typing, I realize that somebody special gave or made for us nearly all of the things in our house ! I am one lucky person!

And finishing the circle, back to the fridge! Oh, you might think those drawers in the corner are cool - that's where I keep utensils, ice cream scoops...and the bottom drawer is partially decomposed potatoes. I'll get to them after the hubbard squash!

Welcome to my kitchen, Ginny! Have a seat and let me pour you a cup of tea.

Love you, Katy

Home Decorating

To all of you blog readers who seem to have an endless interest in the daily escapades of our children and who also have expressed an interest in even more mundane things like how we have painted our kitchen, bless you! But here it is. Glenn, Ineke, and Sean went crazy with a paintbrush the week I was in Orlando...and when I got back, the kitchen was "brandy" and the dining room was, oh, I forget. Some sort of sage! Just what the doctor ordered! Here is our Glenn-designed- and-handcrafted cherry table, surrounded by friends -it easily seats about a million!

From this angle, you can see Mom's beautiful quilt, in just the perfect colors, hanging on the wall in the living room and our new photograph in the dining room!

This is the photographer, http://www.brettdeacon.com/ ! It is a SPRING Wyoming scene, the perfect thing to get us through the winter!

And here are the blinds we ordered and Sean and Glenn hung. Do not look closely at my basil plant or you will see that my talent with plants remains static. Come visit Chez McCrea - you will be well fed, well-entertained, comfortably-seated...but I'll buy my fresh herbs at the store.