The Rest of The Story

Since so many of you have requested pictures from our weekend in Arkansas, I put together this little story in pictures ... with a bit of narrative added in.

Mike, Grandaddy and Emily

One of the catfish that I caught. Yep, that's my foot in the picture. I don't touch catfish for any reason and this one was flopping and rolling back toward the water. The hook had already come out of his mouth so I put my foot and the pole there to keep him out of the water until my Dad could come over and pick him up.

We weighed one of the catfish that I caught. It measured 3 lbs, but we are not sure if the scales were right. It sure looked bigger than 3 pounds. (Note to self: Maybe we should get Dad some new fish scales.)

Emily had a good time fishing too. She had a little pink fishing pole with a pink hookless bait. She would cast the bait out into the water and then reel it in. For some reason, she kept calling her bait a "her". Maybe because it was pink. When she was not fishing, she also enjoyed sitting in the aluminum boat (on dry land) and eating a snack.

She also got a rash on her face and arms while we were there. We think she might have been allergic to some of the flowers that she was constantly picking. She's such a girly girl. She has to pick any and all flowers that she sees. (This afternoon, she was trying to pick up the dying dandelions in our yard. They had been sprayed with weed killer the other week and looked totally pitiful, but she wanted them anyway.)

So we put all the fish that we caught in a big bucket and then hauled them over to the new pond. I think we ended up taking like 4 buckets full of fish over there. We would pour them into the water and watch them swim away. (Check out Emily's rubber boots! So cute ...)

Do these fish look like they're swimming anywhere? Well the big blurry one in the middle is swimming away, but the other ones look a little stiff. What's that? They look dead? I think they were! We left them in the bucket for quite a while. My Mom tried to make me feel better by telling me that they probably started breathing better after my Dad threw them into the deeper water, but I think she was just being nice about it. I'm pretty sure they were dead.

We also went to check out an old cemetary that's out in the middle of the woods. The area around it is all grown up with weeds and vines. We took down the names on as many of the monuments that we could find. Mike has been doing some research online to see what he can find out about the people who are buried there. It's all quite interesting. I'll try to post some pictures of that adventure soon.

And that .. is the rest .. of the story. (RIP Paul Harvey)