Real Fishing

So we went and got some fishing poles :) I had to ask around to see where to even go since we never go, and we had friends in town that actually fish so they helped us out :) We ended up going to this little pond just in the foothills about 5 minutes from our house so it couldn't have been any more convenient. 

I kept telling Bradley over and over how sometimes you go fishing and you never even catch one fish. Sometimes you sit there for hours and hours and get nothing, sometimes you get nibbles, and sometimes you actually catch something - but that doesn't happen every time. You have to be patient and wait... a lot :) So what do you know - we get there, he does his first cast and the SECOND it hits the water it goes under and comes up with a fish!!! I've never seen anything like it - and there goes ALL the advise I had given him, he was probably thinking, "yeah right Mom, this stuff is easy!" :) It really was amazing :) And it was adorable how happy he was!

Next we got Gracie's pole ready and it wasn't too long until she caught one too :) I was really surprised. I had gone fishing several times when I was little and never had such good luck!

Sammie sure had fun watching everyone and playing in the dirt :)

It was a very successful fishing trip and I can't wait to go again! It started raining right at the end which cut it a little short, but that's ok - they both caught one fish and we threw them back and everyone was happy :)

Pretend fishing

For some unknown reason Bradley got obsessed with fishing. I have no idea why. We never talk about fishing, we have never gone fishing, who knows where it came from. This started before last Christmas because I got him a pretend fishing pole and he was super happy. So he decided that we should take the pretend fishing pole and head down the street to the little creek next to our house. I was explaining to him that it was not actually going to work, but we could try just for fun. It was pretty darn cute, so cute that it didn't take us long to go get actual fishing poles for actual fishing.

Mud

Goodbye Summer - Hello school

And another school year starts. I think every year is going to get harder and harder. Because every year they are away from me more and more, and that makes me sad. And I have to pretend to be happy so that they will be happy and excited for school. This was the first year that Bradley was in full day - 8:45 - 3:23 (last year he got out at 1:30 every day) and then Gracie was going from 2 days 9-11:30 to 3 days. She was lucky enough to get her same teacher from last year though and she loves her so that's good :)

I hate flies

(WARNING - THIS POST IS VERY GROSS!)
So we noticed Snickers was walking weird and had his tail tucked in between his legs and we got worried. We knew that he had some matts in his hair so we decided to lay him down and try to cut them out because we were thinking maybe it was just pulling and that's why he was walking weird. We went in the garage and started brushing him and right away I saw a maggot crawl out of his hair on his back. Kevin was brushing near his rear end and said he saw some raw skin and found more maggots so right away we loaded him up in the truck and took him in. The vets said not to feel bad - it had been really rainy and wet, and a couple days earlier he had had an upset stomach, the poo got stuck to his fur back there and they said it doesn't take long at all for flies to come and lay eggs and then you have a maggot problem. And man oh man, did he have a problem! They had to shave up half of his back and one swipe of the razor and 'hundreds of maggots starting coming out'!!! They had burrowed under his skin and the poor thing was in pain. Snickers is a tough cookie. He is 12 years old now, has lived his whole life with three legs and he is doing so well! He stayed over night and was on meds for a week for the infection, and his back looked terrible and raw but you could tell he felt better right away. Poor puppy!!!