The Mergenthaler Family

Tomorrow, the kids will have been back to school for a week. I am still adjusting to the quiet when they are gone (and the shock of noise when they come home). The first day went well. Emily had been setting her alarm for 6:30 a.m. for the previous week to practice getting up earlier. Because Makayla and Emily share a room (and Ricky sleeps on their floor most nights), everybody was used to the early morning schedule before the first day. By the time I got out of bed on the first day of school (around 7 a.m.), Emily, Makayla , and Ricky had already eaten breakfast and were taking showers. Andrew woke up about 10 minutes before we left to walk to school, so we threw some clothes on him and headed out the door. Ricky started Kindergarten, and he is doing great! He loves it. I thought he would be worn out--especially because he was sick all summer, but he has more than enough energy. He practically runs the whole way to and from school. On the first day, his favorite thing was ...

Ciscoe Morris, for those of you who are not familiar with gardening in Washington State, is a knowledgeable and slightly eccentric gardening expert in the area. He appears on the local news and has his own radio show where he shares tips and answers the questions of people who call in about their gardening dilemmas . He is truly enthusiastic about gardening and, honestly, a little crazy. I used to love to watch or listen to his show when we lived in Washington, and I miss his tips now that I actually have a garden. Having a garden this year has been lots of fun for all of us but especially for our Little Ciscoe , Andrew. One day last week, I went out to check the garden and brought in this load of tomatoes: Andrew couldn't get over it. "Look at those potatoes!! There are lots and lots!" His enthusiasm was so cute. He'll often tell me, "Mom, I gonna go check the garden, OK?" Then, he'll scoot on out there and bring in a handful of green "potatoes...

Something about Sundays gets us all a little silly by the evening. I heard a few funny things from Makayla and Andrew today. You may not laugh because they are kind of "you had to be there" types of things, but I'm going to put them on here anyway just so we will remember them. First, Makayla. On Sunday nights, we usually go for a walk or play a game together as a family. Tonight we played UNO. During the game, Andrew kept yelling, "UNO!" After the game, all of the kids were saying it in silly ways. Then, Makayla was quietly trying to count in Spanish. She wasn't doing it to be funny because only I could hear her, but this is what she said: "Uno, dos, tres, taco, . . what's next?" I started laughing and since the rest of the kids wanted to know what was so funny, we spent the next ten minutes counting in Spanish . . . "Uno, dos, tres, taco, nacho, burrito . . ." . . . .Like I said, you had to be there to get the full effect...

Two qualities that children possess more often than adults, in my opinion, are imagination and honesty. Imagination, even in children, is a little harder to come by nowadays unless you count people imagining they have more money than they really do and, therefore, running up exorbitant credit card bills--but that's probably more like delusional thinking than imagination. The imagination I am referring to is when kids get together and really play. We had one of these breakthrough imagination moments at The Iowa Children's Museum a couple of weeks ago. Back in June, the museum was getting old for the kids. They thought they had seen and done everything and summer time brought hoards of day care kids (whom we try to avoid all summer long, but no matter where we go, they are there). Anyway, it seemed like the museum had lost its savor--especially for the girls. One rainy morning, we couldn't decide what to do with ourselves. Ricky suggested going to the zoo (don't ask me...

That cute little picture will make a little more sense when you read the rest of the post. Somehow, it didn't get included in my original upload and it is a pain to rearrange the order of the pictures once they are up. We celebrated Emily's birthday this week and it was tons of fun. The only thing I don't like about when our oldest child has a birthday is that it makes me feel a little older too. However, having a TENager (I stole the phrase from Rick's Uncle Troy) is definitely something I'm up to. We are so blessed to have this wonderful young lady in our family. She provides a strong positive example for her brothers and sister and she is a joy to all of us. So, here's what we did to celebrate Emily's 10 th birthday. We spent the morning at the beach (Kent Park--it's just a lake--maybe even man-made--boy, do I miss the ocean). We packed a picnic so that we could stay longer. Ricky was excited to try out his new lunch box for school. We have been p...