BIG LAKE

Breath Taking..........Big Lake Mr. Grant was so dang cute in his fishing hat and early birthday present 4X4 wagon ! I could just eat him up! Even with a double ear infection the day we were trying to get away he is a happy baby.........yes while the roof crisis was going on I had to make a trip to the Dr and found out Mr. Grant had another double ear infection......poor guy! September won't come fast enough...........we are all ready for him to gets tubes put in his ears!!

These are my two fisher men..........they both LOVE to fish! Logan loves to cast out and just reel back in, which is to be expected of a 4 year old. He did however get comments from 3 different sets of people about what a amazing job his can do casting out. It is true...........he can cast with the best of them!

Kiersten tolerates fishing well.......she did however express that she would rather her and I go shopping at the mall while just the boys fished. It there was a mall within 100 miles that would have been my plan as well!

Mr. Grant was just plum tuckered out from all the fishing.....we actually never even had a bite. Justin kept expressing how dumb fishing is, what a waste of time it was and how it's just disappointing! He refused to get a fishing licence which meant he wasn't suppose to help the kids in any way. So that left all the hooking and fixing lines up to me. I did grow up fishing but that doesn't mean I love touching worms by any means............I would rather me at the mall like Kiersten. I was getting so fed up with his attitude that I finally had a little talk with him. I told him that we have three boys, two of which we already know really enjoy fishing. We can either join our kids in loving what positive past times they like or not..........either way we only have a short time until they'll be teenagers and we'll need to have as many positive memories made with them as we can. So I told him, No I do not enjoy fishing very much, but I have kids that do so I make a choice to be excited about what they are excited about............simple as that, it is just a choice and I told him he has the same choice! Regardless of the choice he made I did ask him to stop complaining out loud because I could see in Hunter's eyes that he was taking Justin's negative comments personal.

So Justin got quiet and took on the job of tending to Mr. Grant.

The kids were getting bummed about not having any bites but were enjoying finding crawdads.

The next day we decided to try renting a boat to see if we could catch anything. The kids were all so excited about the boat. Justin was still not sure about the whole thing. So we decide to split the time........Justin took the kids for the first two hours while I kept Mr. Grant and then we switched.

It did crack me up that Justin wore the life jacket. Only 12 and under are required to wear them...........made me smile!

To no avail, we didn't get any bites the whole 4 hours.........this only added to Justin's bad attitude. He said the boys needed to stop fishing all together and should only be allowed to ride their quads because that's Justin's hobby and they don't need another hobby. I told him it doesn't exactly work that way.......we don't get to pick and choose what our kids are interested in and as long as it is something positive I though we should support our kids. I wasn't denying that it can be frustrating to sit and wait while nothing happens but complaining about it isn't going to chance the outcome and it's just not fun to be around someone that's continually negative.

A worker at the boat rental felt bad for the boys so he gave them one of his fish. You would have thought the kids taught it themselves......they were thrilled!

Hunter was ecstatic to be gutting a fish with his dad and it shows in this picture! He couldn't have been happier and I think at that moment things started to change for Justin..........or at least that's what he later said.

Hunter loved ripping the guts out!

ToTaL bOy!

Justin didn't quite share the same enthusiasm...

Justin's face kind of shows what he's thinking and feeling! We did decide as a family that we liked riding in the boat, even though the fishing wasn't good. When we have teenagers it would be so fun to have a ski boat or something!