The Atkin Family: Lately

Our garden ended up being a dream come true this year. I'm so glad we put it in right away so we could enjoy it this summer.

Here's a shot of it when it was really starting to produce:

Here's one Joe took:

Joe and I have wanted to have a huge garden for about as long as we've been married. We've tried a couple of times but with renting often, moving so much, and killing a lot of plants, it hasn't worked so well. This was going to be the place where we finally made our dream a reality. And it worked! We did pay a good amount for the soil and compost to fill those boxes but it sure ended up being worth it. Everything grew so well!

I think there is no better way to get kids to eat well than to have a garden. I was amazed at the things my kids were eating just because they could pick it fresh while they were playing. I remember Nate one time picking some red lettuce and just eating it. Eli is pretty picky but even he would eat the snap peas all the time. They were delicious. We all loved the corn and enjoyed that for a few dinners. The watermelon ended up being pretty delicious too.

Some of them weren't quite as sweet as really good ones from the store but after a few days in the fridge it would actually get a lot yummier.

We all loved the cherry and roma tomatoes and we still have tons growing. The cucumbers were a hit, too. They were the smaller, pickling kind and they were delicious! I don't really like cucumbers that much but these were good. Eli loved those too. Our kale is been the longest lasting, hardiest crop. Sadly, I don't really know how to do much with kale except make kale chips (which we did a lot), saute it in some coconut oil, or put it in a couple of recipes I have. Our pumpkins are looking awesome! We'll have enough for all of us to carve them here in a little bit. Gardens are the best. Now we just need to put in some fruit trees and we'll be set.

The kids and I made some marshmallow/toothpick creations. I wanted to test out making some at school. They loved it! We hadn't done that since the girls were tiny. I don't know why I waited so long. Here are some of their creations. We had some neighbor girls over to build them, too.

Elizabeth made this awesome one that needed to be propped up. She named it The Burrow--as in the Weasley's house:

Eli has become quite the little puzzle maker. He started out doing these 24-piece puzzles:

Now he can do this 60-piece one all by himself!

Being silly:

I thought that was pretty impressive for a 2 year-old.

Speaking of that silly guy:

I have endless Eli selfies on my phone.

He and Nate also steal my phone to take pictures of me:

Cooking and grading papers. That pretty much sums up my life right now.

We decided to go to the local county fair one night on a whim. Well, I basically dragged Joe there in the name of a "fun family activity". Not long into our time there I whispered to Joe that I thought we had made an enormous mistake. We basically spent as much money as we would have going to an amusement park, and all for some county fair! I don't get how people spend that much money. It was not worth it to me. We got out of there as quick as our kids would let us. The few pictures I got were of the petting zoo area:

The kids did like getting to milk a cow for the first time.
Joe got this picture of a huge pig:

Sometimes my kids play together so nicely that I take a picture of it.

This was a Sunday lunch picnic:

This was over by the duck pond near our house:

I love that my kids can entertain themselves with a few rocks and some grass.

One Saturday morning we made some blue crepes in honor of our BYU cougars:

Sadly, they lost terribly that day.

At the beginning of the summer, we got a flier from a nice older woman in our neighborhood. She is retired but she used to teach gifted/talented classes. She wanted to do an opera for children by children and was putting it all on for free! My girls were thrilled and they had a great time. Sadly, the woman has parkinson's and with that and with some scheduling craziness with families going out of town, they weren't able to finish it. She agreed to let the kids perform it still (in its rough version) to parents and family members. It was so great. We loved watching it--"Trouble on Candy Isle". The kids helped write the story, all the music, made all the sets, and performed it all. These kids were singing all by themselves up on stage! I was so impressed. I would have never done that when I was their age. There were some hilarious parts, especially with one boy who was wearing a big inflatable suit (he was a gummy bear).

We mostly got video but here's a couple of pictures:

We had our second bone break in the family and it happened to Elizabeth again:

She was walking in the street holding one of our plasma cars and basically tripped over it and used her arm to break her fall. Both her forearm bones buckled. They splinted it and then four days later re-set it. Then a week later she got her cast. I'll have to get a picture of that up soon. She's handled it all like a trooper and luckily hasn't had any pain since they re-set it.

One morning, Elizabeth had her appointment for her cast so she didn't go to school. She was helping Natalie get ready for school and told her she'd make her lunch for her. Later, when I was cleaning out Natalie's lunchbox I found this cute note: