All kids think the world revolves around them, but lately our kids have had pretty good reason to believe it.

Over the summer, our Downtown Association sponsored a Where's Waldo contest, in which people (kids) were invited to search in downtown stores for a cardboard cut-out of the character and collect a card from each store in which they found Waldo. Once you collected 10 cards you could turn them in to one of our book stores to be entered into a drawing for Waldo-related prizes. Our kids so enjoyed the hunt that they ended up collecting cards from 20 stores, resulting in 2 entries each for the drawing. Still, the contest ran for a month and plenty of kids and parents participated. It's not like there were only four entries.

At the end of the contest we got a call that Daniel had won one of the prizes, a small book of Where's Waldo postcards. He was SUPER excited, yet vowed to share with his brother and co-hunter.

Another summer adventure involved Herky On Parade 2, large statues of the Iowa Hawkeye mascot, Herky, all decorated differently and dotting our local landscape. They were on display from May through last week, and John and the boys made it a personal project to visit all of them and get pictures. There were 84 statues. This was quite an effort. I didn't mind because it meant several serene Sunday afternoons to myself while they went searching for Herky.

As the installation was winding down, our local newspaper sponsored a contest--send in a photo of yourself with one of the Herkys and be entered into a drawing for a prize. Again--LOTS of people took lots of pictures with these Herkys all summer long. The boys had to narrow down their favorites to submit--one from John's email and one from mine.

Running scared from Big Foot Herky

Walking dead with Zombie Herky

Wouldn't you know--their Big Foot photo was randomly drawn as the winner. The prize? A set of 12 (TWELVE!) miniature versions of the Herky statues. I suppose I can be thankful they didn't win 12 of the actual statues, or a complete set of 84 minis, but still, these "miniatures" are about a foot tall each. And 12 of them? I tried to explain the concept of eBay to the boys (they retail for $40 each), but nothing doing. They are far more motivated by the prize itself than by any monetary value. So far, they've designated one for John to take to work and one for my office, one for each of their bedrooms and the football Herky for the living room. This last is to be rotated seasonally. We shall see.

And as if that weren't enough, they also were invited to be among the kids throwing out the "first pitch" at the Cedar Rapids Kernels game on Friday night. Our elementary school had a group excursion and part of our package was that we got to designate kids to make a "high five tunnel" for the players entering the field, carry the flag for the national anthem, and throw out the first pitch. I didn't sign us up for any of this, but the day of the game the school secretary called and said no one had signed up and would the boys like to do the pitch? I said sure, but when we arrived at the stadium they were horrified at the prospect and flatly refused. A one-hour rain/lightning delay gave Edward enough time to change his mind and once he saw his brother about to grab the glory, Daniel got right in line. Four or five other kids went first--ballpark birthday kids get the honor as part of the party package. They were older and perhaps had practiced ahead of time. They all fired it straight down to the catcher. Our boys...well, let's just say they helped ensure the catcher was warmed up for anything the pitcher might toss.



We might need to move to a bigger city. These boys have a serious case of Big Fish, Small Pond!