Over the 4th of July week, I took time off work and hung out with 2 of my God kids and one of my nieces. I had a blast and I'm pretty sure they did, too. Here are the steps I use to having a fun Aunt Hilary week.
The first step is for the girls to do their nails. We're still testing the lucky nail polish pattern theory, so Ambrosia got the rainbow trout pattern and I tried a different pattern. You will notice further down in this post that the rainbow trout pattern was once again lucky because Aunt Hilary didn't catch a single fish the entire week and Ambrosia caught a bunch.
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| Step 1: Do our nails. |
The next step is to take the kids to the mountains, where they don't get to go much. They were amazed to see snow on a mountain on the last day of June.
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| Step 2: Take kids to the mountains. |
The next step was to find an open spot to fish on a very busy lake. All of our favorite spots were taken, so we went with a spot that really didn't fit 4 people fishing. Since it was mostly for the kids to catch fish we made sure they had enough space to catch fish.
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| Step 3: Find an open spot to fish. |
Next was to catch fish.
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| Step 4: She caught a rainbow trout to match her rainbow trout nails. |
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| Step 4: He made sure he caught more fish than his sister that day and the rest of the week. |
Step 5 is to make sure the kids are well fed. A trip to Punky's for lunch took care of this step really fast.
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| Step 5: Feed the kids. |
Another step that was important was to help with casting practice. We have plenty of room for practice casting and she was excited to see how far she could cast with her new "adult" rod.
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| Step 6: Practice casting |
Steps 7 through about 50 included a visit to the park, feeding ducks, trip to the prison museum, bike riding, Wii video games, slip n' slide, water fights, Farkle, Redneck Life, recipe experiments, baking cookies, movies, more fishing, farmer's market and a lot more. There are no naps during Aunt Hilary week unless someone falls asleep during a car ride.
I learned during one of our many trips to a local pond that I have these 3 kids trained to pose for pictures. I was so busy re-baiting hooks that sometimes I didn't grab the camera. Each kid would stand there until I took their picture, no matter how big the fish was, and they wouldn't let me take the fish off the hook until the picture was taken. All 3 are pretty good at posing for fish pictures, too.
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| Posing for a fish picture. |
There were 2 fishing days that Uncle Kris couldn't go with us which meant I had to make sure all 3 kids didn't fall in the water, bait 3 hooks and take fish off of all 3 hooks. It was a little crazy but I had a blast doing it. It helped a lot that all 3 kids get a long great, are well behaved and help each other out. In this last photo Jordan is taking Cori down to see the crawdad. I stood nervously at the top of the hill because I saw a snake down there earlier (little garter snake). Plus that hill is a little steeper than it looks, so I was worried they were going to slide down the hill into the water. They were fine and if they had waited for Aunt Hilary to slide down the hill with them, Cori would have missed it and Aunt Hilary would have been soaking wet.
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| Going to look at the crawdad. |
By the end of the week I was exhausted. I love taking my nieces, nephews and God kids fishing, camping and atv riding. We haven't been able to go camping this year, but next year I hope we'll be able to take them camping again and get to take them on some atv trail rides, too!
