Only in summer...

Summer for us has been a big mix of hard work, sweet rewards, friends, family and good times.

Last summer our first attempt at growing corn and then freezing it didn't go well. We let the corn go too long in the garden so it was terrible to eat. This year, our stand of corn looked so pathetic that I decided to get sweet corn to fill our freezer with. 

Ben put up these great twinkle lights out around our patio for us.

It's so nice to sit out there with friends and family and enjoy cool summer evenings under their beautiful glow.

We had one hellish night when all the cattle got out. But in the end, my parents and a bunch of our friends came over and we rounded all but a few of them up.

It might have taken half the night to do it, but we ended up having a great time running around the farm in the dark. Noah was asleep before we knew the cattle were out. Levi was still awake when I headed outside to help. So I got him watching TV in the dark and quiet office. The commotion outside eventually woke Noah up so he joined Levi. Eventually Levi fell asleep, but we were still out chasing cattle and Noah was wide awake. So once we finished up and everyone came to our house for a beer we put Noah to work popping microwave popcorn. Turns out we worked up a big appetite and kept Noah busy!

I'm not sure there's anything as summery as a pitcher of limey-tartness. Kinda pretty too!

We went to a couple of rodeos to watch our friends compete. The boys love to watch the steers get loaded at the end of the rodeo.

We had a casual evening event at MCC and lucky for my boys, Abram and Mabel came too! Levi and Mabel had a GREAT time with some water squirters outside on the patio.

The garden produce has been less than overwhelming this year. We had an OK amount of green beans. I only canned one batch which is the least I've ever done. My tomatoes have been a disaster and the cooler weather has made the okra pretty slow too.

The chickens are producing what feels like endless eggs. We are constantly trying to figure out how to get rid of eggs.

The boys helped me make applesauce one evening.

Using the food mill makes applesauce making a very fun activity.

These five boys have so much fun together. We never know what they're going to come up with next!

So many eggs.

And then look! The corn in our garden actually produced corn! I was ready to just ignore it and call it a failure, but my mom was sure there was good corn out there. She went and picked it and cleaned it and we ate 4 ears of it and she took the rest to freeze. It was good! So, while our corn looked so sad and pathetic, it actually produced something!