Yup's Up, Doc?

Today the boys picked the carrots they planted back in the spring.  One of my favorite things about carrots is that you can see the little green leaves but you have no idea what is going on under the ground until you pick them.  Considering how sad the rest of the garden was this year, I didn't expect much out of the carrots.  But I was pleasantly surprised . . . as were the boys.  The ones I didn't thin were tiny (as expected), but the ones that did get thinned were pretty decent sized.  I made all the boys (my brother Seth's boys, Devon and Corbin, were here as well)  take turns picking carrots in an attempt to be an equal opportunity mother.  As the bigger ones appeared, there were lots of exclamations of, "Whoa!  Look at that one!"  But Matthew lucked out and picked the biggest one of all.  He was almost overwhelmingly excited about his "huge carrot!"  He even tried to take a bite out of it before I could cut it into carrot sticks and then decided it was too hard to bite and nearly exploded while waiting for me to cut it so he could eat it.  And the very best part?  Out of five boys, not one complained about eating his vegetables at dinner time.