Atlas has plenty of flaws, but being polite has never been one of them. His politeness even seems to be growing (well, except when he yells out "You guys are bully-heads!" to random groups of teenagers). For example, lately when I say "I love you" to him he incredibly sincerely replies "Thank you so much! That's so nice of you!"  It never fails to make me smile, just like his little prayers. He is in charge of prayers at our house lately and always wants to be the one to say them. They always start out like this:
Heavenly Father
Grateful for this days
Then he proceeds to just talk about what is going on- last nights went something like this:
I'm going to go to sleep
I like my bed
I can be nice.
Dad read me some books.
Mom is in charge.
I went to church.
We are going to save our money, and then I'm going to play at Disneyland.
Then he ends it.
Pretty sweet, although nothing can beat how sweet a sleeping kid is.

The Farmer's Market has moved outside for the summer. It's at a nice big park and when we pulled up Atlas exclaimed "a party!" which it basically was for him. We listened to some live bluegrass, drank a soda, played at the play ground, saw some friends, ate a pudding pop

and when we all got too hot, we cooled off with a signature New England frozen lemonade. I haven't ever seen a snow cone shack out here, but there are plenty of frozen lemonade vendors. It was tasty.

We took a little break at home

before heading out to another party- WaterFire

where we tried our second New England treat. Fried dough is basically what Utahns call a scone. They have them all over here (you can even get them at the movie theater) but instead of honey butter they dust them with powder sugar. I was proud to check off a frozen lemonade and a fried dough from my list in one day. I am starting to feel like a true Rhode Islander.

We saw some break dancers as we were walking around. We sat down to watch their show and they gathered quite a crowd. Atlas was mesmerized. He loved it so much. After some warm ups they started a full on choreographed show with music, which, about 5 minutes into, area security came and told them to pack up. The crowd boo'd and chanted "let them dance!" but the security wasn't having it. Atlas cried his eyes out. He wanted "to watch the boys dance." It was sad, but ultimately good, cause Nick really needed to get home and prepare his lesson for Sunday.
This week is going to be full of mundane things, like cleaning, packing, getting the car's oil changed, printing a zine cover, putting our mail on hold etc etc etc- which means we are about to leave RI and head (drive) to UT. There is a lot to do and think about when you are leaving your house for over a month and it's really stressing me out. Not to mention, we need to prepare for the Providence Arts Festival on Saturday. Ack! What am I doing writing a blog post? I don't know.

Nick and Atlas have been having "sleepovers" a lot lately, which entail bringing Atlas's mattress out into the living room and falling asleep while watching a late night movie, usually a Harry Potter. Atlas loves Dobby, Gwon, Moinie and Bouldamart.

We checked out the RISD Senior Thesis Exhibit. At first Atlas said that it was boring, but then decided he loved it so much that he threw a gigantic fit when we left.

Every time we go to the mall Atlas asks for a pretzel and a drink. It's his favorite treat.

We had a full week of fun and good weather. Thursday we went to the Southwick Zoo in Mendon Massachusetts. Atlas really loved the goats that you could pet. He wanted to touch every single one, but they kept moving around, which made him think there were new goats all the time. He spent quite a long time with them, and then visited them again right before we left. I was surprised he liked them so much, since right when we walked in a macaw squawked and Atlas screamed and started running away crying. As long as the goats didn't make noise, he was good. One did make noise and Atlas stayed far away.

There were even a few baby goats.

Nick got to pet some of his favorite animals, alpacas.

We packed a lunch and ate it right in front of the giraffe habitat.

There was a deer "forest" which was just a huge amount of land and trees with 20 or so deer running around that you could buy food for and feed from your hand. Atlas really liked them too, but they weren't quite as friendly as the goats.

Atlas wants to learn to cross the monkey bars. He tried over and over again until we finally pried him loose.

We have been walking around a lot to explore and exercise. We saw this while walking around campus. It made us laugh. (Altas spent most of the day wearing one glove, because.... ?)

There are so many trees here... and squirrels....and rabbits.... and chirpy birds. I feel like Snow White.

Atlas has gotten over his two biggest fears at the Children's Museum. The giant woman

and getting wet.

There was a dance party in a big empty room in the museum. Atlas was too shy to dance when there were a bunch of people in there, but as soon as they started to clear out, he danced his heart out until he was the last one on the dance floor.

We love the food trucks here. This weekend we tried french fries with roasted onion mayo and vegan ice cream. Delicious.

This is our house/apartment. We have the 2nd floor. Just thought I would post this up since most our family/friends will never see our place.

We actually had a break from the rain over the weekend. We went on a really nice walk and found even more great places and buildings in Providence. (which means I will also be posting on Buildings in RI today) We walked by a beautiful little park called the Gladys Potter Garden, and Atlas wanted to stop so we went in and explored for a while.

It had a very Secret Garden/Snow White feel, with iron gates and trees surrounding the entire park. Tons of squirrels and birds were wandering around. There were a few little playgrounds and lots of communal toys.

On Saturday Nick spent most of the day writing a final paper while Atlas and I hung out with the 3 youngest Culley kids.

We walked to a park.

Tyson showed Atlas how to hit a baseball.

And we all ran around and got exhausted. We also had a pretty wild dance party, that I will post the video of if I can figure it out.

On Mother's Day we woke up and went to church. When we came home Atlas helped me unwrap my presents. I always give Nick crap because the only presents he knows how to give are books. Surprise, I got a pile of books!

Don't get me wrong. I love them all. Two of them even had Mother's Day drawings inside done by the authors.

After I read Nick's paper to check for grammatical errors we went to visit our friend Eric who just got home from the hospital. His surgery went well but he will be recovering for a while. Afterwards we went straight to Becky and Mohammed's for dinner. It was nice not to have to cook my own Mother's Day dinner and to have a bit of social time before coming back so that Nick could revise his paper some more. Unfortunately our day was so packed that we didn't get to skype either of our own Mothers, but look forward to doing that today.

It's been very rainy lately. It feels like we haven't seen the sun for two weeks. Needless to say, we have mostly been lazy. Well, mostly just Atlas and I, as Nick has been writing final papers and running around to different readings. He did sneak in a nap this weekend though.

On Friday we went stir crazy and broke the bank and went to The Pirates: Band of Misfits. It's always fun to go to a matinee on a weekday cause the theater is empty (and it's the only time we go since matinee's here are as expensive as regular showtimes in Utah)  Sometimes Nick's weird schedule really is awesome.

Call me morbid, but I love cemeterys. Pres. Monson has remarked quite a few times that in order to get a feel for a town you should visit a cemetery.  The cemeterys in Rhode Island are amazing, as some of the first settlers of the United States came here. The graves are old and broken and many are so worn that they are impossible to read. The ones that you can read will often be interesting, noting people's military service, how young they were when they died etc. There is an extremely gigantic cemetery that we can always see from the freeway and we decided to go take a stroll.

We barely walked through a portion of the cemetery because it is so large, but even on our short stroll we couldn't help but notice a large amount of Potter names.

It made me wonder about our genealogies and if either of us have ancestors who immigrated into New England, which I am sure we did.

In the car, Atlas says "Hey mom, I stuck popcorn in my ears!" He was pretty proud.

We also went to the Farmers Market on Saturday. Here is our haul.

I made some beet bruschetta on the baguette with fried queso blanco. It was sooooo good.



After a nap we went to a downtown block party for Cinco De Mayo. Dowtown Providence is really pretty, and really hard to drive/park in so we don't head there very often. It's always nice to be there though because they have really awesome shops and small local businesses.

Today the sun is actually out. We are playing with toys inside right now, but are going to go to the park as soon as Nick gets home. My plans to walk around all the pretty neighborhoods is on hold for a while as we are training Bixler to not be so afraid of other dogs, so we try to walk at dog parks. Our trainer took us out last weekend and worked on what we should do when he starts howling at other dogs, so that is our next step that we need to practice. Oh Bixler... he's SLOWLY turning into a better dog.

We also spent some time this weekend visiting/helping out a friend who is currently in the hospital. Eric is really the only person from Nick's program that we spend a lot of time with. Atlas loves him. For the last month of so his legs have been randomly giving out. He went to a Dr. who sent him to a neurologist, who did some MRI's and CAT scans and thought he had a bone spur in his spine and checked him into the hospital. Upon further inspection, turns out he has a tumor growing around his spinal column. It will be incredibly tricky to remove and they will have to take out portions of his spine and rebuild it. It's very close the spinal cord which makes things pretty scary. He is undergoing surgery on Tuesday, but has been in the hospital all weekend getting doses of steroids and other treatments to hopefully make the surgery go better. We are praying for him and hope that you will too!