The Mergenthaler Family

I found this picture of Rick on UI's faculty page. He always jokes about how most pictures make him look like a 300 pound man. I think he looks hot! (I mean very professional and dignified)

We went to the Nauvoo temple for the first time today. It's very pretty and impressive. We didn't get around much to anything else and actually only spent about 1/2 hour in the temple and 2 hours watching other people's children, but it is nice to be able to say that we have gone. Next time, we'll try to plan some time to get around and see some of the historical sites, etc. It is a really cute town. The Mississippi river is amazing--today I got my first view of it. Too bad I forgot the camera, but we really didn't see much besides the playground and the little nursery room in a building next to the temple.

Never when we lived in Washington did we actually go to an apple orchard. But, here in Iowa City, it is a yearly tradition with many residents. We have been to Wilson Orchard 2 times already and we LOVE it! It's a beautiful 15 minute drive from our house. Once Andrew has chosen his apple ("app" in Andrew-language), he carries it with him for the rest of the day. Ricky gets so excited about picking that I have to frequently go through his bag and get rid of the apples he has picked up from the ground. Emily and Makayla worked hard to find a "perfect" apple to take to their teachers at school. The weather here has been sooo nice! 70s-80s and sunny. I can see why many people here name fall as their favorite season.

The girls started school on August 18th. A trail runs right along the side of our yard which takes the children under the bridge by the creek and to the school. It is about a 5-10 minute walk. It was really hot those first weeks (70s and 80s). We had a cooler week last week (60s) which prompted me to get the girls umbrellas for those rainy days. As soon as we had umbrellas, the rain stopped. Every day the girls hoped for rain so they could use their new umbrellas. Even though we had rainy days, the rain always seemed to stop for walking to or from school. Well, today they lucked out and actually got to use their umbrellas. Even though it is raining, it is still really warm outside--77 right now. I don't mind the warm weather because I'm nervous about the winter. The longer the temperature stays above freezing, the better. Guess what? I'm still unpacking!

OK, I'm still learning how this works. I wanted to just throw some pictures up with descriptions, but I'm blogger illiterate. The pictures from the last post are from our long drive from Seattle to Iowa City. We stopped in Helena, MT to visit Rick's Grandparents. It was so good to see them. We had a great visit there. When we got here, our house was in the middle of a major remodel, so we lived with a month of choas--no appliances, boxes of stuff, eating out on the back porch. That's some of the pictures. Ricky got a nasty black eye playing at the school playground. He looked pretty cool for a couple of weeks. Emily spent the first couple weeks creating things with boxes. In addition to the dollar store, she made a fun slide for Andrew (it really works), a trampoline, a chair, and a couple of other buildings. I think I'm going to leave it at that for tonight. My first impression of blogging is correct--it is time intensive and I have other, more important thin...

I spent quite a long time not even really knowing what a blog is. Once I figured out what it was, I couldn't imagine why anybody would want to do it. I thought blogs seemed time intensive and slightly annoying in the way that people put their stuff out there for everybody to read and see. I'm a pretty serious journal writer (even though it has been a few months), so I understand the part about having an outlet--writing things down, etc. But, I felt like blogs were a little more, I don't know, like bragging or something. But, since our move to Iowa City, I have been thinking about a good way to keep in touch with family and friends. A blog seemed like an appropriate way to share our pictures without plugging up people's inboxes and to let people know how we're doing. Maybe sometimes some of you can write back and let us know how you are. We prefer real letters in the mail (or even e-mail) or real visits when possible, but we'll take what we can get. I don't...