The Atkin Family: 2020 Until the World Went Crazy

The year 2020 started out fine. We had some big changes ahead of us. Joe and I decided that we just couldn't see how to fit our family in our current rental long-term with the baby coming. We still weren't in a position to buy a house in our area so we started to look at other options. One them being Clovis, CA, where Joe had a job opportunity working with a friend from law school. The two of us took a day trip over winter break to check it out and we both really liked the town and could see ourselves living there. A couple weeks later we took the whole family down and stayed in a hotel for the weekend. The kids loved doing some night swimming:

While the kids didn't want to move, they understood our reasoning. We looked at houses together and got excited about the space we'd be able to have down there.

Meanwhile, life went on normally. We had a fun YW activity combined with the other ward where they taught us Muay Thai, a kind of martial art:

My belly was getting bigger and bigger:

I felt pretty good but ended up being diagnosed with gestational diabetes.

That meant recording everything I ate and finger pricks 4 times a day to check my blood sugar levels. That was in addition to the daily shots. It also meant changing my diet. I had been craving a lot of carbs this pregnancy so that had to change. It was really hard for me at the time but I'm really proud of myself for being able to do it. I never had to take insulin, although they considered it since my readings were on the border at times. I stopped eating cereal and went two months without having a Dr. Pepper (except once on a drive to stay awake). Here is one of my food logs:

My friend Carrie threw a really fun brunch for Valentine's Day. We had delicious food and enjoyed talking for a morning:

Eli and I made some Valentines sugar cookies. One of his personal goals was to learn how to make sugar cookies so we did that together.

I loved this note Natalie left on a treat she made, and Joe's edit. :)

The boys had fun trying to make a Rube Goldberg machine. It didn't work out quite so well but it was fun to try.

I kept going in for regular appointments and ultrasounds and we got some fun 3D pics of our baby girl:

The kids loved that last thinking position she's in. :)

I loved this picture Eli made me:

His Valentine's Day bag:

We did pretty well at reading scriptures in the morning and doing Come, Follow Me together. We read this scripture and I told the kids about how my friend Kari and I would quote this scripture to each other as a joke. Eli thought it was so funny that he wrote it down to memorize it. :)

I still loved hiking regularly and especially when the poppies started blooming:

I had two baby showers. One was thrown by friends from the ward, along with another woman in the ward who was expecting. People were so nice and we got lots of cute things. My friend Megan also gave me all of the hand-me-downs from her baby girl so I felt like we were set. The other one was a book shower thrown by the sweet ladies in my book club. I got a bunch of cute children's books and they even got this cake, which I loved:

It was so hard to think about leaving all the wonderful people in Fremont. We started announcing it in February when we found a house and started the process to buy it! Our plan was to move after the school year finished in June. Joe started working in Clovis a few days a week and commuting back and forth.

A beautiful double rainbow right outside our front door:

Natalie entered the bookmark contest and won! She really improved quickly at lettering:

I kept teaching FAME at the elementary school up until February and finished all the lessons in the boys' classrooms. They loved this sculpting activity trying to make horses: