The Mergenthaler Family

Sean celebrated his 1st birthday on February 1st.  Because we were on an airplane plane to Disney World that day, we celebrated his birthday (along with Makayla's) on the Sunday before we left. One of Sean's favorite foods is macaroni and cheese, so his birthday dinner was easy to make and all of the kids liked it.  After dinner, we opened presents.  He likes things that light up and make noise.  So we got him a little bear that sings and wiggles its ears.  We also got him new pacifiers.  I think he is our first baby since Emily that loves "binkies".  Usually by the time our babies hit one year I have broken them of the binkie habit, but Sean is a little tougher.  I don't like kids to be sucking on a pacifier when they should be talking.  I have tried to make the rule that he can only have his binkie at bed time or in the car, but I haven't been great at enforcing it.  Birthday cake was after presents.  He liked the ca...

I often have more to write about than time to write it.  As a result, I haven't been updating our blog as often as I used to.  Rick mentioned to me that I may be losing readers because my posts are sparse, lengthy and not very funny.  It's true that I'm probably tyring to cram too much in on the rare occassion that I write.  If you find reading our blog boring, I'm sorry.  Maybe I'm just not funny anymore.  Oh well, at least I'm putting up some cute pictures of the kids for grandparents and family to see and that's what really matters to me.  To reduce the length of this post, I'm not going to write about Andrew's recent preschool field trips or our birthday celebrations.  I'll skip right to our Disney trip.  If I come back another day to write about the other things, you'll see some really cute pictures, but don't count on it.  I'll be lucky to get this one finished. Our flight to Orlando this time was out of the Des Mo...

Oh, what do you do in the winter time when all the world is white?  (and cold) Really, how do we manage to keep busy children entertained through the cold winter months?  Well, honestly, they do essentially the same thing they would any other time of year--play outside. One benefit of living in  a winter climate is snow.  Playing in the snow provides hours of entertainment if the temperature outside is not too cold.  For my friends on the west coast, "too cold" means less than 15 degrees or "too windy" which makes it "too cold."  We have had a mild winter thus far, and we didn't really have snow to play with until Christmas Eve.  Since then, the kids have enjoyed sledding in the backyard, making snowmen, and building snow forts.  Best of all, they are old enough and independent enough to be playing outside in the cold without me.  I stay inside with Sean. A few weeks ago, we had perfect weather for building snowmen and snow forts....

We had a nice, quiet Christmas here in Eastern Iowa.  I admit I felt a little sad leading up to the holidays when people asked, "Are you going anywhere for Christmas?" When I answered no, their inevitable next question was, "Oh, do you have any family coming to visit you?"  I felt a little pang of sadness when I replied, "No, we're just going to have a quiet Christmas at home."  After our painful Thanksgiving week, I was due for a real vacation and the thought of another two weeks at home with the kids did not sound relaxing at all.  What I was forgetting, though, was that Rick would be well and hopefully the kids would be healthy too.  In the end, I liked Christmas very much even if we didn't go anywhere or have any visitors. Here is some of what we did: Christmas Cookies Christmas Eve began with cookie baking and decorating.  Since I don't love baking or decorating sugar cookies, Rick took on this activity with the kids while I gave t...