Win The Day: WE DID IT FOR THE WORMS

Have you ever gone fishing and purchased worms from a store? If you have, you know where they're kept. If you haven't, I'll tell you. They're kept in a refrigerator. So if I go fishing and don't use all the worms, what should I do with them? Do I just turn them out, or save them for next time? On occasion, if I think I am going to go out again soon, I will take them home and put them in the fridge. Heidi has been a good sport about this, very tolerant of my worms. However, my last purchase had been chilling a little too long. Tolerance was gone, the worms needed to go.

The easy thing would have been to go out in the back yard and turn them out. I haven't been known to always do things the easy way. I wasn't about to change today. I had a better idea, a funner idea.

Heidi was involved in some training classes for her job today. The older three kids were in school. So after picking Chase up from preschool, it was just the two of us for a few hours. I'm sure that had I asked, other than eating them, he would have had several ideas of what to do with the worms. Then again, that might have been one of his ideas. Rather than giving him that option for lunch, we went home and made us some sandwiches. We were going FISHING!

My favorite place to go fishing that is both close, and kid-friendly, is Tibblefork Reservoir in American Fork Canyon. My kids all really like to go there. It's a nice little mountain lake that is easy for the kids to access, and we rarely go home without them catching something.

We usually fish the side of the lake opposite the parking lot. Often times, when we get over there one of the kids needs to go back over to the bathroom. Sometimes I get lucky, and it's one of the older kids that can go back on their own. Most of the times my luck is bad. Before we left, I asked Chase if he needed to go to the bathroom. No. Let's go.

You have probably already guessed what happened when we got on the other side. I hadn't even got one line in the water yet. That's right. And it wasn't the kind that we could take care of behind the trees. So, back to the bathroom. While there, I figured I should take a turn too. Why is it that when it's daddy's turn, the kids always stand there playing with the doorknob? I knew that there were people just outside the door waiting to come in. I couldn't reach him to pull him back, and the more I told him to leave it alone, the more he kept playing with. I fully expected to be face to face with a stranger in no time. Please, tell me that my kids aren't the only ones that enjoy giving their parents this moment of panic.

Not wanting to relive the last 30 minutes, I decided that we would just stay and fish near the parking lot today. I haven't had much luck on that side in the past, but we were running out of time. It was time to get rid of those worms.

Fishing with my children can be challenging in many different ways. It almost always means that I don't really get to do any fishing for myself. I can live with that. I find enough days to fish for myself. My challenge with Chase is he wants to do everything himself. He doesn't like me to hook the fish and then let him reel it in. He wants to hold the pole from the beginning, hook the fish himself, and reel it in. He misses a lot, but he usually catches a few all by himself.