RJ's Fishing Pole

After a couple weeks of begging, we let RJ spend $20 of his own money to purchase a fishing pole. His obsession with fishing nearly surpassed several professionals.

Stream Fishing

Fishing started in the stream near our house. RJ didn't have as much luck as Doug, but he was determined.

Whitetail Seven Lakes

Next we tried the seven lakes at Whitetail. While packing up we forgot 2 key things: lures and bait. But we did catch some tadpoles. When I threw one back in the water, a fish ate in 2 seconds.

  

Even Sara got in on the fun.

At the end of 14 days, we have easily gotten $20 worth of fun out of the fishing pole. But it was difficult to beat the cost of Doug's pole that was constructed using a stick and a rubber worm that RJ caught.

Don't miss RJ's Fishing Pole - Part II.

Last Day of School

The last day of school was a bit of a non-event this year since the kids were 'learning' from home.

We participate in a drive-by event to celebrate Julia's second pre-school graduation. Sara even convinced RJ to have a picture taken.

  

For the two weeks after school ended, the kids participated in special classes (art, science, Spanish, music). Here they are building a volcano.

Farewell 2005 Subaru Forester

We are not a 4-vehicle family, so we had to say goodbye to the 2005 Subaru Forester. Sara took it pretty hard ... but having her family there for support made things easier than Curbie (we hope).

Natural Disasters

This spring we did a lot of first hand learning about nature. Unfortunately most of the learning didn't have a happy ending. 

1. Praying Mantises: we got to watch them hatch and crawl around. We released 50 or so and kept 4. RJ was super good at catching fruit flies from our compost bin. We watched our 4 remaining mantises eat the flies ... but they all ended up dying. 

2. Robins: in the tree directly outside our garage window, we had some robins build a nest. Each day the robin laid another egg until there were 4 in the nest. Unfortunately one day we noticed that there were only 2 eggs in the nest ... and the robins abandoned. We couldn't find any trace of the eggs. Bummer.

July 7 Update

Good news. We have been finding some semi-mature praying mantises in our yard ... and in our house. Here is one that was hanging out in the basement.

Neighborhood Stream Fun

The Grays showed us where the small stream across the street turns into a larger (50' x 50' x 10' deep) watering hole with a sandy shore. The kids quickly convinced Sara to repeatedly take them ... rain ... shine ... warm ... cold. 

Julia found a rope swing on the friendly neighbor's property

Geoff, Bradley, RJ check out the fishing

Imagine how nice those shoes smell sitting in our house

This fish was way too big for this body of water

Granddad's Garden

Mother's Day Gardening

Granddad has always declared Mother's Day as the official start of gardening season since it's rare to get a frost after early May in Baltimore. The gang headed to his house for weeding, tilling, raking, fencing, and planting.

Family hard at work

Everybody had a job and stayed focused ... shocker.

Julia helps Granddad plant seeds

Julia and Doug weeding

RJ preps a row for planting

At lunch, we ate most of food in the house ... so the labor wasn't free!

Planting squash