This morning Johnny and I woke up early and headed down the road to Brushy Creek, where we tried fishing for the first time in Texas. I bought a cheap rod/reel that came with a filled tackle box strapped to the side and we set off to catch a whopper! Johnny immediately took a bag of those rubbery worms and threw them in the water saying “here fishy fishy!” We spent three hours out there, casting off in various places, but in the end caught nothing but seaweed. It probably didn’t help that there was a boy scout fishing derby going on at the same time. Too many people. Nevertheless we had fun.

After getting home I set out to clean out the backyard tool shed for the first time since we moved here. It was filled with rat feces wall to wall, floor to ceiling. I took every last thing out of that shed and swept it and patched some holes and fixed the floor. Johnny is so eager to help with whatever I’m working on. He was out there carrying some fairly heavy flower pots out, and when that was done he was picking up dirt and carrying it out by hand. He sure is a better helper than I ever was as a kid! We got it all fixed up and

We are finding ourselves in some quandaries here lately with our jobs as it relates to Johnny’s schedule. Now that I have the new job we’re having to get extra creative on how we deal with school closings and such. It was only my third week at PA and I already was forced into asking for time off to be home with Johnny, whose school closed Friday for what was certainly Good Friday but described as a staff enrichment day. It would have been a vacation day at the old job but was not at the new one. In a couple weeks, we’ll be back in the same boat with another very similar school closing on a day we both have to work. This is only going to come up more and more over the years, I’m sure, with two parents working full-time and no obvious person in the area to help out. I mean, we have plenty of great people who can help watch him, but in this instance it would call for getting to our house at 3am, getting him ready for school, and taking him to school. I don’t feel comfortable asking anyone here to do that.

One of the best iphone pics I’ve taken! Johnny in deep thought.
A boy in a sink.
Uh-oh, the Muppet paintings are making a comeback. Here’s Link Hogthrob.
Not one of my better efforts… Robin.
A nice cool-ish morning to go fishing.
Little Fella fishin’.
We found the fishing hot spot. A few kids had some luck catching tiny little bass but we didn’t.
The end result of the tool shed cleaning. Should’ve taken a before pic.