The Mergenthaler Family

In the boys' birthday post, I told you a little bit about the 83 different Herky statues all over town. Since then, I have learned a little more about them, and we have visited a lot more. If you are curious about these artistic-looking man-birds, you can visit herkyonparade2.com for more information.  Basically, this is only the 2nd time this community-wide art project has been on display.  The last time it happened was 2004 (before we lived here).  Now, in 2014, they are doing it again with even more statues and extended the display to include Coralville and North Liberty in addition to Iowa City.  If I understand it correctly, artists sponsor a bunch of fiberglass statues.  Different people/groups of people make designs and the statues are created.  They are on display from June through August.  In August, the statues will be auctioned off as a fundraiser for the United Way and Johnson County.   For our family, it is simply a fun dive...

The Saturday after the last day of school, Ricky woke up at 6:00 am and and jubilantly declared, "Happy summer everybody!!" And that is how our summer began about two weeks ago. Ricky now has one week of Cub Scout camp behind him and one week of an all-day basketball camp run by the University of Iowa basketball team. Both camps were awesome for Ricky. Most kids would be exhausted after an all-day long camp in the hot summer sun or playing basketball in a stuffy basketball gym with 300 other boys, but Ricky came home each evening excitedly describing the days' events to us and eagerly awaiting the next morning when the fun would begin again. Today, Ricky won the free throw contest at basketball camp for his division. This is a big deal. He had some very talented friends at this camp and there were a lot of kids there!  My picture isn't great of him claiming his award because he didn't know he won and I wasn't expecting his name to be called.  I caught him runn...