Are women born this way???

a fun day on the creek

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...edited for typos and to add this... I forgot to mention in all this that Lisa was a ROCK STAR!! She did awesome! She hasn't been fishing since the summer of 06 and was a little anxious about getting out there and not catching anything. Clearly that was not the case and after I helped her with the first fish, she was ready to jump in and unhook it and release her fish. All in all, I think she caught 4 and I caught 7. Nate landed...well too many to count.
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So I know I'm going to disappoint a few people with this post but I wanted to share some pics from our adventure today. We took off to go fishing about an hour and a half away from home. We only had a small window because our neighbors who were watching the girls had a date night planned so we had to be home by a certain time. I got my boss to cover the last 2 hours of my shift so we could get out there as early as possible. My buddy Nate met us out there and had already found a nice spot and had landed dozens of fish.

Here's a shot of the babysitters.

This spot is very popular with families because it is good and easy fishing. We saw several kids landing fish around us. It's just a great atmosphere with lots of fish to be caught. You can also actually see the fish EVERYWHERE!! We didn't take our good camera this time so didn't manage to get a good shot of the fish in the water but you could look out and see dozens of fish at any given moment...a pretty cool thing to see.

So Lisa and I weren't landing the fish right off the bat. It took us a while to fine tune our technique but once we did, the fish were ours!! Lisa landed the first one and it was game on!...or I should say FISH ON!!









I should mention that all three of us were using 5 weight fly rods which made the fight a little more exciting. As you can tell, they aren't the biggest fish but they sure are fun to fight and try to land with a light weight rod. Actually, it's a BLAST!!

So the pro fisherman, Nate, spots what appeared to me a silver salmon on the opposite bank mixed in with all of the smaller pink salmon. He started to target it and it didn't take long before he hooked and the fight was on. It went on for 15 to 20 minutes. It was AWESOME! Lisa and I stood back and watched the pro work what ended up being about a 20 pound king salmon on a 5 weight fly rod. Lisa even took a video of the last minute when he landed it and held it up. It was only then that we really got a good look at how big it was. Congrats Nate! I'm so glad we were there to witness that.




Thanks for letting me get that out of my system. I have SOOO many videos and pictures to share. As soon as I get off this stupid schedule I'll be able to post more often and catch you up on all of our adventures.

not the post it started out to be

I was planning on doing a long catch-up post but Alyssa woke up a while ago and things got delayed. I still wanted to at least share a quick video so here is a good one Lisa took of the girls hugging.

I started this thing when Lisa was gone where I ask if they want a BIIIIIIIIIIIG HUUUUUG or a tiny hug (in a realy high pitched voice). They picked up on it pretty fast. You can hear one of the girls say BIIIIG HUUUG real fast...that's where it came from.

we're having breakthroughs left and right

The girls are amazing us every day with their new tricks. Lately it has been counting. For a couple weeks they have been asking us to count for them when Lisa was gone, I got Katy to start counting herself. The first time, it went something like this...

"Wooooooonnnn. Tooooooooo. Feeeeeeee. Fuuuuuuuuull. Siiiiicks. Toooooooo. Wooooooonnn. TEN!"

I couldn't believe it! It was awesome. I asked her again to count the animals and the second time it went...

"Woooonnn. Tooooo. Feeeeee. Baaaaare. Biiiiiiird. TEN!!"

Not bad at all. So we've been trying to get them to count on video but haven't been too successful. Alyssa is also getting into the act. One of the first times she counted, she went all the way to ten and only skipped five. We were both VERY impressed.

So here is a video of a little counting by Katy. One word that you'll here in there is "I'll dude it". We've learned that I'll do it, I did it, and I'll dude it are all interchangeable.

I got Alyssa to open up a little in this second one but she took a lot of interest in watching the video of Katy so you can hear her talking with me while we shoot Katy. Entertaining nonetheless.

we're doing good

Just wanted to share a quick video to show how good the girls and I are doing. Here I am thowing a pillow up in the air and letting it land on them. They thought it was hilarious.

Clearly, everbody is fully recovered from yesterday.

everybody is okay

Some of you may have seen my update on Facebook but I wanted to follow up with a post here. Lisa left yesterday to go to Indiana to spend some time with her grandfather who isn't doing so good. I'm here by myself with the girls until Tuesday evening. No big deal, right?

Well, today started out great. The girls and I went to the zoo this morning. Although it didn't go perfectly, it was still fun. We got home and here's when the fun started. I had a doctor's appointment but the plan was to get the girls down early so our next door neightbors could hang out over here while I was gone. As I was corralling the girls to get them ready for their nap, I was holding Alyssa's hand as we were walking toward the room and she tripped. No big deal, it's happened a hundred times, right? Not this time.

She didn't immediately cry out but a few seconds later, she was holding her arm and screaming in pain. It was heart breaking to see her like that. I picked her up and checked out her arm from her shoulder to her fingertips and nothing felt wrong...but she wouldn't move it and everytime she tried, she would cry out.

We got some ice and she calmed down while she actually started to fall asleep on my chest. When I tried to lay her down in the crib, she REALLY cried out again. I knew I had to take her to the doctor. Instead of going to the ER, I called and made an appointment with the girls' doctor an hour from then. I called Lisa back to tell her what happened while Alyssa was crying out. I asked if she wanted to talk to Mommy and of course she said "yyyeessss". Surprisingly, she grabbed the phone and held it in the arm that was hurting! Slowly she pulled it up to her ear and listened to Lisa talk to her. This was the first time she even attempted to move her arm and she wasn't crying!

After that, she was acting fine. No more crying and no more holding her arm. I thought about not going but as Lisa said, it would give us peace of mind. So I went to see our doctor even though Alyssa was acting fine now. I explained the whole ordeal to the doctor and she explained to me what is called Nurse Maid's Elbow. Apparently, toddlers are very susceptible to their elbow coming out of socket. Actually, it's one of the bones in her forearm that is held in at the elbow by a ligament. Evidently this bone can slip out of the grasp of the ligament and is pretty painful. It can be put back in if you bend the arm. Evidently, we or she managed to put it back in place. I'm thinking it was when she picked up the phone to talk to Lisa.

Anyway, she's fine now. Actually she was fine about 20 minutes after it happened so she's definitely fine now. Doc said she would may be sore for a couple days but she showed no sign tonight that it hurt. Actually, at one point she bonked her head and she said "hurt" which evidently reminded her that her arm hurt so she grabbed the wrong arm and started fake crying. It didn't take much to distract her and help her forget that anything happened.

They both went down to bed pretty easy tonight. I'm so glad it wasn't worse. It's hard to believe that this actually happened today. But now they are sleeping and I'm sipping ona cold one while I'm eating popcorn and watching Die Hard...so I guess everything is okay now.

Let's see what tomorrow brings us.

a couple videos

Grilling fun. I grilled Lisa's salmon using a salmon rub, onions, lemons, and wrapping it in tin foil for about 15 minutes. MMMM-mmmm good! The other meat on there is an awesome pork chop for my dinner and some chicken for grilled chicken salad the next night.

This is just some good ole fashion topless 2 year old shenanigans.