Getting our beach fix

All summer we have done a community garden with two other families from church. The girls haven't been able to do much as far as planting, mulching, or pruning, but they are great at harvesting, which is by far the most labor-intensive part of this garden. In Utah, you have to really tend the plants and check on them every day. In Wisconsin, however, the plants grow by themselves and the trick is keeping the weeds and the bugs at bay. We tried planting brussels sprouts but the bugs loved them before we could. I don't think Kelly minds that too much... The girls love picking beans, especially the purple ones, and I have discovered beet greens. They are so much more mild than spinach and loaded with iron. I love making new discoveries!

We also got our beach fix this week at Sunset Beach, a manmade lake/pool right by our house. Lizzie and Anna loved the sand and the water, which never got deeper than their chests. It made it so I didn't have to worry about them at all. The top picture is Anna in the yellow suit (with pink snails on it -- she chose it herself!) with her friend Gracie, and the bottom picture is Lizzie in front of the lake/pool. Daisy, on the other hand, did not like the sand. She wouldn't walk on it, sit on it, and it undid her to have sand on her hands. I was so worried that she wasn't going to be a beach baby. After a few hours, though, she got intrigued by the feeling of the sand running through her fingers and then she got comfortable walking on it. She still doesn't like having sand (or anything else messy) on her hands, but I taught her how to go to the water and wash them clean and she seemed to like that.

It is good to get back into our routine after coming home from vacation. It took a few days to stop missing everything about Salt Lake, especially the mountains, but I have really good friends here and when we all are away from our families, we become a kind of family. If we haven't seen each other in a while, we call and check in, we celebrate together, and we get each other through hard days. I'm really glad that we are having this chance to learn to depend on others, and to get very close as a little family. I still miss my sibs and my parents, but with unlimited long distance and webcams (which we need to use more often), I feel like we keep in touch pretty well. Plus, I love the blog system. The world is much smaller than it used to be.