Germany 2006

A year before Mercer was born, Dad took a trip to Germany with his friend Greg to support the USA Men's National Soccer Team during World Cup 2006. They spent a month there and, as usual, Dad took a lot of pictures; over 500 of them. With the next World Cup looming, nostalgia struck, and Dad decided to publish all of his photos on a special site. We're only two or three posts deep, but once you get bored of reading about Mercer's antics, feel free to wander over to Greg and Chris in Germany to get a small sense of what it was like to join millions of people in the world's biggest party.

Extra link: Greg and Chris in Germany

Skeleton Pajamas

They glow in the dark.

Bath time: Then and Now

Here's Mercer in May of 2007, a month after he was born. He's got some rash from being in a baby carrier all day in the city. He's so tiny.

Here's Mercer in September of 2009, washing the sins away from another trip into the city. He's a giant!

Blaze

Jon, Meredith, and Evelyn came up to accompany Mercer, Mom, and Pop to the Great Jack O'Lantern Blaze this weekend. There was scary music, lots of people, and thousands of pumpkins. Mercer has been to the Blaze before, but he was much more aware this time around!

A beehive with bees.

A pirate made from pumpkins.

His pirate ship.

Miscellaneous pumpkins.

Mercer kept from being scared by holding his flashlight close.

Before we went to the Blaze, though, we checked out the old local cemetery near us. Spooky!

Flat Eric

Unpredictably, one of Mercer's favorite stuffed animals (or in this case, "creatures") is a character named Flat Eric. Mom and Pop bought him in Boston many years ago when they lived in Rhode Island. Pop became aware of Eric via a video on the Internet by the artist Mr. Oizo advertising Levi's jeans.



Eric made the subsequent moves with Mom and Pop to New Jersey and finally New York and now exists solely for Mercer's pleasure. He's the only character we have that Mercer calls by name (the rest are just "Monkey," "Bear," etc., even if they do have real names) and he likes to include Eric on story time, play time, and this morning, putting-on-the-shoes time. Mommy put Mercer's old black Converse shoes on Eric and Mercer proceeded to hold Eric in the car so he could show everyone at school Eric's new shoes. Eric isn't a big pop culture character, so nobody knew what Mercer was holding, but it was still cute. If Mercer comes home today with Eric's shoes still on, we'll try to snap a picture of it.

Applefest 2009

Mercer and the gang traveled to Warwick, NY for its annual Applefest celebration. Unfortunately, so did 5,678,789,995 other people. This was Mercer's first visit to the Applefest and he had as good a time a person can have weaving in and out of clueless people who decide to stand in the middle of a giant mass of clueless people.

Still, Mercer got to go on some rides, watch musicians perform what might have been folk music, and eat candied apples. Yum. Because of the crowds, Pop could only take his camera out a couple of times. We documented Mercer riding in the shuttle bus and discovering a candied apple. Oh well.

Mercer and Dad throw rocks in the park.

Just as the title says, Mercer and Dad went down to the park last night. We threw rocks into a little runoff pond, kicked a ball around, and watched a handful of trains race by. An evening well spent.