Last night was an amazing night! Well it was pretty awesome anyway. I live in the country and I wouldn't have it any other way. When my husband and I were talking about having a family we talked about where we wanted to raise our kids. We were both raised in the country - me on the outskirts of Eugene and him in a little country town.
The beauty of our house is we bought property from my family and built our own house. Its exactly what we want. On our property we have a pond. Not a spectacular pond and not a year round pond. More like a hole filled with water in our pasture... but we call it a pond so there ya go.
Well K's teacher sent a request to families to see if anyone could bring in some tadpoles for the class so they could watch them develop. Of course I immediately volunteered our pond and tadpoles for the adventure. K was very excited to go tromp down to the pond and look for the little suckers.
As a child, I fished for tadpoles from this very same pond. I was with my brother and best friend. We each got a bucket and tied a string to it. Then we got a rubber raft and floated out into the middle of the pond. We tossed those buckets into the water and pulled them out for hours. We had a blast! We got soaked! We got sunburns. We did not, however, catch any tadpoles. It's a memory that is still strong in my mind today.
I wanted to create those memories for my son. But I wanted a more successful outing then the one I shared with my brother. So we got our grubby clothes on. Put on our rubber boots. Grabbed our aquarium fish nets and trekked out into the pasture.
There is a creek that goes through the property leading to the pond... so since we were wearing our rubber boots... we walked right through the mud. And got stuck! K got his boots stuck and so did I. So I had to help him out and then try and free myself. We managed to get unstuck without loosing any boots or covering ourselves in mud.
When we got to the pond we started our fishing. It started out rather uneventfully. We would see a tadpole swim and try and catch it. That method sucked! We only caught one little tadpole. The water got muddy and then we couldn't see the tadpoles we were so studiously stalking. So we moved to another part of the pond... same results. Only this time, no tadpoles.
So I thought like a five year old. Who cares if we can see 'em. Who cares if we don't catch any. Let's have fun while we do it. Like throwing the bucket into the water from a raft. So we moved a little farther down the pond to a clear part of the water and just went to town. I told K to just scoop and see what he can get in his net.
And that's exactly what we did. We got mud. We got twigs. We got bugs. We got plants. But most importantly we got Tadpoles. Lots and lots of tadpoles. Probably about twenty of the little buggers in all different sizes. We laughed and laughed and at one point K fell backwards into the water. His little rubber boots were full of water (he was thrilled as we walked back because he could hear his feet squishing in the boots!).
It seems that sometimes when we plan things too studiously we forget why we're there. And although our main goal last night was to catch the tadpoles, it was also to have fun. It was also so my son and I could bond. It was so I could teach him how to be a child and have fun in the country. It was so when he grows up he'll remember this and want to raise his own kids in the country. It's moments like this that reminds me why I wanted to be a mother. So that I could learn how to be a kid again!
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