Frog Hunting With Kids During Summer Evenings

Frog and toad hunting has been this weeks evening pastime.

It is HOT outside during the day and this gives our boys something fun to do when it cools off.

Access to ponds or creeks…We have both in our backyard and many more on the golf course across the street.

Transportation…We walk or use the critter mobile golf cart.

Lights…We use headlights and flashlights and even golf cart headlights.

Nets…Do we have nets!  We have short-handled and long-handled and large holed and small holed.  We are even willing to reach in.

My boys tell me this is a “smaller” bullfrog.

Container…We use a big tote.

Sense of humor…Peter likes to take “frog orders” before he heads out.  I say I would like a green tree frog and his brothers might say a bullfrog.  Peter especially likes to watch people open the tote and see how many he has brought home.  Below is poor Mitchell not expecting dad to pull giganto bullfrog out.

An ability to say goodbye…With the hopes of seeing you again in the pond behind our home.  This took years to perfect as saying goodbye to “caught critters” is very hard for little boys.

Peter may have been kissing this little guy on a dare from big brothers.  

Big brothers can be especially cantankerous.

Camera…It is much easier to say goodbye if you have a photo to remember your new friends.

Potato brush and soap…Have it at every entrance to the house for the “Frog Hunters” to use before entering their home!

Thanks for letting me share,

“All that makes you, smile, laugh, think, love, cry or cry laughing.”

-Abbie  allthatmakesyou.com

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Smushed Game

“I really find identifying flattened animals that have been hit by stuff fascinating.  I mean, I enjoy living animals better, but if they are smushed it is a little fun trying to figure out what they used to be.“ – Who do you think?  Peter of course!

That is us on the way to the pool.  He was so excited he wore his goggles in the golf cart the whole ride up to the club.  On the way home he was looking for “smushed stuff.”

Hope you are all having a great holiday weekend!  We are off to look for new big kid beds for the boys.  Why doesn’t Rubbermaid make furniture?  We need something you can scrub and that the drawers are indestructible.  What we really need is a giant gerbil cage.

-Abbie,  All that makes you…     

The “Starving Season” has begun

My husband Jim calls this time of year the “Starving Season”.  It isn’t because I’m getting ready for swimsuit season it’s because I wont feed him!  Specifically, I won’t come in to make them all food to eat.  That is an actual picture from last night of our golf cart lighting up the flower bed so I could finish mulching.  No making fun of me for using the golf cart like a John Deer Gator.  I have been asking Santa for a Bobcat for years.

I am preoccupied with what is popping up in the yard, the smell of hyacinths, how many more leaves are on each tree compared to the day before, what to plant that can survive little boys walking on and riding their bikes across…

how to hunt down the person that came up with the idea of fiberglass pots and string them up by their toes…

how to grow giant carrots at your front door to use as Easter Bunny bait…

figuring out a way to have one pot of tulips on the kitchen table for weeks by planting them in the fall in inserts and in stages..

Look closely...

having what I need close by so there is no excuse for an unattractive flower…

how to bring as many flowers into the house because eventually it will rain and I will have to come inside.

It all comes down to when I will feed these boys, (I am including my husband in this brood.)  I have a seven year old that is talking about dinner as we’re eating breakfast.  I just found out that he has a “second breakfast” at school everyday.  They all have eating habits like Hobbits, dinner, second dinner, dessert, customary bedtime chocolate malt because I am told it isn’t another dessert but a drink.  Do you have any idea how much ice cream I buy?  If they weren’t all so darn skinny and active I would make them cut back.

I am bad, bad, bad because of my anticipation of being unable to come in and cook I BOUGHT A BOX OF DRIVE THRU TACOS!  I did.  Genius.  I am a hero to the kids. My husband gave me a head tilt smirk as if to say, “I want real food”…but he ate it.

I got to play in the yard until 9:00pm.  Success, I thought.  I finally came in the house and I had to make them Malt O Meal at 9:30pm.  How many more weeks until the pool opens and I have to wear a swimsuit?  I do not have a Hobbits metabolism at my age but I do kind of live in the dirt. 😉

I’ve been posting for a couple of weeks now.  Please follow my blog, leave suggestions, comment, like…  I need encouragement.  If you need a good laugh read, “I forgot to tell them to keep your heads out of the toilet”  I want to create a place for people to go and read a quick story that gives them a smile or a laugh.  A story they can relate to.  A place to hit after you have read the news in the school drop off/pick up line or while your waiting on the side of a practice field.

All that makes you smile, laugh, think, love, cry or cry laughing.