Ice Fishing Adventures...in January

Have you heard about our ice fishing adventure yet??? As some of you may know, my dad has picked up his passion for fishing again which is wonderful for him to have an 'escape'. He truly does love every kind of fishing and it would be safe to say that he is perhaps a bit obsessed with it all.

Anyway, during our week off after Christmas it was a beautiful sunny day and Brad and I thought it would be a good idea to take the boys out to one of the nearby lakes to go ice fishing with 'Poppa'. (this is Poppa on the left here>...) So we all bundled up and took the short drive to the lake.

We pulled up to the lake and parked. We noticed a few different ice-fishing tents here and there and weren't quite sure which one was dads. So we just started to walk on the snow covered ice to find him. There were about four tents set up at a reasonable distance from the parking area and then if you looked waaaay across the lake on the other side there was one more.......guess which one was dads?? This just wasn't like him to choose the 'less than easy' way of doing things! Yeah right! Good 'ol dad.

Despite the distance, it was a gorgeous day with the sun glistening off of the snow; so we put smiles on our faces and started walking darn it. We got about half way across when we noticed a rather large sound.......have you ever heard the sound of cracking ice? It's quite a big, daunting sound. I looked up at Brad and he gave me a look back that I don't like seeing from the one who's supposed to be calm! He didn't say a word and just pointed to walk closer to the shore (the long way around) We didn't want to frighten the kids or ourselves for that matter so we discussed the fact that the sound and the crack must have just been the layer of snow on top of the very thick ice.But Brett, being very aware of EVERYTHING started making game plans out loud of how we could get off of the ice. We assured him that everything was fine and just kept on going.

We finally arrived at dad's spot and cozied in for an hour or two of fishing. Brett however, was still mapping out his escape and didn't quite 'relax' all the way. The boys had fun trying out their new fishing rods that Granny and Poppa had given them at Christmas; actually I even had fun. I hadn't been fishing in years, so it was nice to do that again. We didn't catch anything, but sure had a good time trying. We were all getting a bit chilly and hungry so Brad and I decided it was time to head back to the truck.

We packed up our stuff and got on our way. While walking, we had noticed a few 'slushy' footprints here and there so we avoided those as much as possible and picked up our pace a bit..... Half way back there were all of a sudden many,many slushy footprints....so the pace got even quicker. Brad and I were both thinking the same thing and didn't need to say a word to one another.

All of a sudden, my foot went 'in'; step after step it was getting a bit deeper........then Braden fell and went in up to his elbows and started crying. Brett then started panicking and crying that we were "going to fall in the water!!!" Brad quickly grabbed Braden in his arms and started to move. He then was almost up to his knees in slushy water. All I remember is grabbing Brett's hand and saying "Let's RUN!" Brad too started to run and we made it back to the shore. Whewf...

We all had very wet feet, but were all fine. We dried off fairly quickly and had a good chuckle about the whole thing......everyone except for Brett. Because "If Poppa ever asks him to go ice-fishing again, he's saying NO!" That's what we heard for the next couple of days anyway; maybe next year:)