Rainy Day Blues?

Ok, so we have had a LOT of rain here in the last week.  Lots and Lots of rain.  And, naturally it is a three day weekend.  Three precious days that could be spent planting gardens, mowing lawn, fishing, picnicking, pretty much anything outdoors.  This much rain is a real roadblock for that sort of thing.  But that's ok.  We found other outdoor things to do.

We can't plant or mow, but there are lots and lots of puddles and a ditch with several inches of standing water in it.  All four of us have rubber boots and rain coats, so we went out anyway.  The kids ran and jumped and splashed all their little hearts desired.  Matt and I were close by, since playing in the ditch means that they were awfully close to the road (which is normally off limits).  It was fun watching them make up games and laugh their little heads off.

Meow was not amused by all the splashing.  But she couldn't help  watching anyway.

The rain stopped and it almost cleared off in the afternoon, so we decided to try some fishing.  Natalie had worked so hard to collect nightcrawlers and slugs and she just couldn't stand it any more.  We just HAD to go fishing.  So we went.  Joey's line got too close to the motor and got some grease on it which took exactly 15 minutes and 5 casts for that grease to eat through the line and send my favorite lure off into the depths of the lake.  Oh well. Things happen right?  So, Matt set to work trimming off the yucky line and getting Joey set up again while Natalie was casting.  I was watching her cast with a particularly fluid motion when not only her lure went in but the whole dang pole!  Ok, this is not going well.  As we helplessly watched her Lightning  McQueen rod & reel equipped with a red-eyed wiggler (a large silver lure with red eyes on it that costs about $8) sank out of sight.  Well, now we're down to one rod and have two crying kids.  Time to pull anchor and head back to shore.  Lo and behold, when I pulled the anchor up, Natalie's line was across it.  I was able to pull her whole setup back into the boat.  Whew!  That was a close one.  Her line was also toast by this time, so we still had to head back.  We didn't even get to use one worm.  We weren't out long enough.  There's always tomorrow...(In case anyone reads this and wonders why we give the kids heavy lures, its because we were casting into the wind toward a sand point for northerns.  Casting into the wind is hard with a grown up sized pole and dang near impossible with a kid sized one).

We did have some good nature sightings when we were out though.  We watched an osprey fish along the shore.  We saw a bald eagle, three canvas back ducks, cedar waxwings and found a colony of red-winged blackbirds building nests near the boat landing.  And of course the kids found plenty of snail shells and managed to get soaked, again.

looking for shells

male cedar waxwing

red-winged blackbird nest