GONE FISHING!!!

I am loosing my touch. I went on a wonderful (almost all) family outing and forgot my camera! Joe has been wanting to go fishing for a while. Most of the time he doesn't have the opportunity to go, but his desire is always fueled my my Dad. (Who gets to go almost daily now that he is retired). So, with nothing more to do around the house, HA HA we set off on our adventure with the fishing poles, some worms and a map.

Now you must know that I was not really into this adventure but the time to spend with my family. I don't have a fishing license because most of the time I am watching kids and the few times Joe has got to fish he hasn't had the best of luck, around here that is. In my hometown he catches the biggest and most fish, which leads back to him always wanting to find that around here.

An hour later we get to our destination, find the road to the lake blocked some ways up but we are not deterred. The kids get changed into their bathing suits and boat shoes, (mine turn up missing) and I have chosen to wear wedge flip flops knowing I am going to change when we get there. Book and water in hand we start our journey down the path. There are beautiful wildflowers everywhere, that's when I started missing my camera. The path is steep but still doable in my shoes, I am praying no one falls. We get down to the end of the paved road and we don't know which way to go. My wonderful husband leaves us on the trail and sets out to find our way. At this point we have to cross a field that has been plowed but is growing back. We try to find the grooves for Naomi to walk in but she was to have no part in that after going out to the farm and being scratched one to many times. We regroup, Naomi goes on my back and once again we set off. I'm loving the shoes at this point--something I have never tried to do before and won't again if I can help it!

The trip only gets better at this point, the mowed weeds end and there is nothing but tall weeds. Now anyone who has ever been in tall weed can tell you, AVOID THEM AT ALL COST. So, once again we send out our trusty scout. He comes walking back "OH MY GOSH, MY LEGS ARE ON FIRE!!!" Let me tell you, he is making me want to turn around right then but he will not be deterred! He presses on and finds us a path that is not full of stinging nettle which was the culprit before. The only path that he found that went to the water went 9 feet straight down. Once again, have you ever done that with kids and flip flops? It makes life interesting to say the least. We get to the water and it is BEAUTIFUL, clear much like our trip we took to North Carolina. Thinking we finally made it I was ready to stay put but that was not the case. We had to cross the water! Once on the other side things really came to life. We saw a little frog about the size of half a dime, lots and lots of shiny shells and tons of really cool rocks. Joe was still not ready to plant himself so we kept on going.

Once in place we noticed lots of crayfish so the kids started catching them. I was fascinated by the sight of many more tiny frogs! I have not seen that many frogs in forever and after the stories I have read was really happy to witness it. There were beautiful butterflies, dragonflies and more shells. Then, the fish start biting!!! Levi caught the first one, it was small, but a fish and that's what we were after. It turn out that was all we caught. Small fish, but there was about 15 in all, they were about 5 different kinds which I thought was really cool too. Our trip was cut short by the threat of rain but we had a really, really good time!

Memories of our trip include:
1 raccoon
1 deer
1 turtle
3 turkey buzzards
5 different kinds of fish
loads of crayfish
25 tiny, tiny frogs
butterflies
dragonflies
lots of nice, steady rain
1 big, beautiful, clear rainbow with BOTH sides present. It was the most beautiful one I can ever remember seeing.

As with most things, you never know how things are going to turn out. I learned a lesson today that I thought I knew well.