Dad's Garden Helper

Exploring the Local State Park

We recently took a trip to the local state park which is about 15 minutes from our house.  It was a beautiful warm spring day...we packed a picnic lunch and our fishing poles and went out for an afternoon adventure.

Michael was all excited to once again get the opportunity to fish.

This was the fishing pier on the lake in the state park

Here are the boys bringing the fishing gear to the pier

Michael enjoying his fishing experience.  Unfortunately, we caught no fish.

We continued on to explore the park, and found a beach area along the lake. 

We found a massive rock along the lake to jump from and take and mom and son photo.

And then we found the beach, the sand, the mud and the water.....

It was so warm and cozy on this beach with the warm sunshine and no wind that I just took Michael's shoes, socks and pants off so he could wade in the water and play in the sand.  He loved it!

The Pizza Priest

Our parish priest, Fr. Mike, made a visit to our home this week to make his infamous south-side Chicago thin crust pizza.  He is known to all folks in town as the "Pizza Priest" and loves to share his delicious pizza with as many people as possible.  He loves to promote his motto of "Food and Relationships" and how food promotes positive and healthy relationships with those that we love.


Now when Fr. Mike said he was coming over with pizza, I just assumed he made and baked them at home and in a 10-minute drive to our home, we would be sitting down to eat warm delivery pizza.  I had a salad and fresh fruit prepared and on the table, ready to go, when he pulled in the yard.  But as he began to remove the items from his vehicle, he came in with two large bags of ingredients (including almost every type of cheese possibly made) and it was then I knew we were making the pizzas at our house!


Fr. Mike is excellent with children, and it's taken a while for Michael to warm up to him.  But each encounter with Fr. Mike softens Michael, and last night was no exception.  Fr. Mike makes the pizza dough and sauce from scratch, and as he began to roll out the first blob of dough, he asked me if I had another rolling pin so Michael could roll out his own pizza crust.  It was such a grand idea, and Michael gladly joined in, took direction from Fr. Mike, and rolled out his own pizza crust.

Fr. Mike brought all of these awesome toppings including sweet Italian sausage, pepperoni, mushrooms, whole back olives, and dill pickles (yes, dill pickles....try it sometime...it's delish)!  And in the end I think he put on 5 different types of cheeses!

The pizza was absolutely awesome, and Michael can attest to that because he ate the whole little pizza he made!!  Normally, I'm lucky if I can get him to eat one piece of pizza, whether is a store bought frozen pizza or a Pizza Hut pizza.  His smile says it all....

....and so does Mom's!

Thanks Fr. Mike for the great night of food and relationships!

A Boy After My Own Heart

Russell and I introduced Michael to fishing this past weekend, and boy was it a hit!  We took him down to the ponds on our property to see what we could catch.  He of course had his own spiderman fishing pole (a gift from my best friend Dawn in North Carolina), and he walked around with that thing like he was the coolest kid in the country!

Now I wasn't very good the first day we did this at taking pictures of Michael and his experience with fishing because I was being quite selfish at catching the fish myself once I started catching them.  So today I took him back to the ponds to focus on "his" experience, and he had a blast.

I would hook the fish for him and he'd reel it in (photo above)...and I am so impressed that this 2 and 1/2 year old can reel in a left-handed open faced bale reel without any problems.  I cast it out, and he immediately wants to reel it in, of course, so we are working on the patience of waiting for a fish to bite the bait first, setting the hook and then reeling it in.

This was the first little shiner minnow he caught (you can barely see the fish by his left leg), and then he caught this one as he was reeling in the line so I could cast it out again....

...a big horned-daisy chub!

Now these fish aren't anything to write home to mom about and are garbage fish anyway, but it is a great experience for a little kid learning how to fish. After he caught this bigger fish, he was really intent at catching more.  Look at the "intense expression" on his face in the photos below while he's reeling in another fish...

I can't quite get Michael to pick up a worm or hold a fish yet, but I did get him to touch one for a few moments today.

Now Michael can't get fishing off his mind.  It's the first thing he asks to do when he wakes up in the morning or from his nap, and he goes out to the garage and brings my fishing pole into the house and says, "Mom, let's go fishing!".  A boy after my own heart!!

The Bear Have Returned

I have been sitting at the computer for the last hour blogging, and I just heard a crash outside the window.  I went into the livingroom to ask Russell, "What was that?"  And we looked outside and there was this huge, I'd say 500 lb black bear that just tipped over the pole that holds the bird feeders.  He was starting to tear into my feeders to get the sunflower seeds.  When he saw us in the window, he immediately retreated to the big pine tree and stood up on his back hind legs to climb this tree!  He was a tall monster!!!  We opened the front door and yelled at him, and he immediately ran off into the woods.  I tried to get a picture through the window but with it being dark outside and the glare of our yard light, it didn't turn out (bummer!).

I've purposefully have left my feeders out 24/7 to see when they would return, and I'll be, they finally showed up.  I'm glad we were still up to save my feeders.  If we'd been sleeping, I would have woken up to demolished feeders.  I now know we have to put them up.

Good night!

Are You My Mother?

We probably all remember this children's book, and it's one of Michael's favorites.  After reading this book to him one day, I asked him:

Mom - Am I your mother Michael?

Michael - No.

Mom - Than who am I ?

Michael - Mom!

Our Energetic Son

Here is a photo stream of the recent life of our energetic son!  He sure has been enjoying this warm weather outside!

He enjoys riding his bike down the hill in our backyard

And loves to look as handsome as ever!

He loves to play at the park....

...and asks me to take pictures of him in the woods

And when a hard day's work of play is done, he always asks his Dad to tell him a bedtime story