Gone Fishin'

This is probably my favorite post of this year so far.  I just love all these pictures!

 

We had the best time fishing with Will's Kindergarten teacher and her husband this morning!  She'd e-mailed me this week to tell me about a kids' fishing derby at one of the ponds at Maumee Bay and, because her husband is a pro fisherman and works for a company/organization that organizes tournaments all summer long, said that they would be out there helping to put this thing on and would love to have us come out if we could.  (Holy run-on sentence!)  Well, we've never been fishing before but Will was very interested when I suggested it to him and I thought it sounded like fun.  So we had our usual big breakfast this morning and drove up to the state park.  P.S. this pond is the one at the bottom of the hill in all our hill-running pictures and bike rides.  They'd stocked the pond ahead of time, so the catching was almost guaranteed.

There were a bunch of families out there but not so many that it felt like chaos.  Exactly the kind of gem of an activity that I love to discover:  few people or small crowds, inexpensive (or free), simple, wholesome and/or educational, involving nature whenever possible.  Those are the criteria of my favorite times spent with the kids.  This was so peaceful and fun!

Obviously, since we're completely new to this, we didn't have poles.  But they loaned one to each of the kids for use this morning and Sophie's was partly pink.  Huge hit!  Both Lisa and her husband helped the kids cast their lines and know what to look for when a catch was made. 

Oh, and the fireman's hat was because there was a fire truck out there just as part of the festivities and firemen passing out hats and goodie bags to the kids.

I know this is a frequent statement with my blog posts but I'm sorry for the repetition with these pictures.  I just love them all and can't leave some out!

Lisa's husband Keith was SO kind and patient and helpful.  I know he can't wait till his son (now age 1) is old enough to fish with him.  I can tell he's a great dad. You can see a little bit of Will's expression of excitement here because of a tug on his line. 

Reel it in, buddy!

See it?

He was watching one of the adults take the fish off the hook and hold it up for him.

Despite his excitement, he wasn't ready to really touch it yet.  Haha!

Casting another line.  Will had to be reminded not to whip the line himself.  He almost hooked Keith on more than one occasion.

Seriously, I just love Lisa.  She reminds me of our babysitter, whose name also happens to be Lisa!  They're both so maternal and loving and the kids just warm to them so easily.  Sophie loves Mrs. Mullen too.

In our time there (maybe an hour and a half), Will caught three catfish and a blue gill!  It was all catch and release.

This is Keith's brother, the fireman.  You can tell they are just fun guys to be around. 

LOVE this!  He caught another one!

Keith's brother took the fish off the line and pretended it was talking to Will and wanted to give him a kiss.  LOL

Will's reaction to the kiss request.  :)

My little lazy bones got tired of standing and asked to sit down.  Someone gave her a tackle box to sit on.  :)

These are so repetitive, I know.  Can't help myself.

Looks like she's got one tugging!

Will may have caught four, but Sophie's ONE was the biggest of all!!  I just love her innocent face in all of these!

Pretty brave!

This kid may have a fishing career ahead of him!

Will's last one of the morning - a blue gill.

SUCH a fun morning! Thank you so much, Lisa, for inviting us.  This is a goofy smile for Soph, but I love this picture.  How blessed we are to have such great people in our kids' lives!

After our fishing excursion, we made our way to the library and took some pictures outside under the flowering trees.

They're always grabbing each others faces to get each other to smile.  Haha.

So pretty!  And such a pretty day.

Back home, we had lunch outside.  Always a treat.

And in the early evening we came back out and ran around in the yard a bit. We just chased each other around and they loved it.  Plus good exercise for mom!

Good times.