First family ice-fishing trip...

We got up early on Saturday morning, packed a lunch and all of our stuff and headed out to meet our friends Nate and Brianne and their four boys to go on an ice-fishing adventure. We drove up to Daniels reservoir (somewhere by Malad Idaho), and were out on the ice by 10:30. We set up our ice-fishing tents......Lars drilled our holes and we started fishing. Within 10 minutes Nate had caught the first fish......then about 10 minutes later in our tent Lars and I caught these two at the same time (with Ashton's help). Gunnar didn't really know what to think! After we put them back in the water he kept asking "Fishy go??", then saying "Fishy bye-bye Mommy."
We kind of fished off and on and wandered back and forth between the two tents. The boys had so much fun playing in the snow, eating donuts, fishing and just goofing off... Having the tents makes it all worth it...it was actually a pretty cold day, but you would never know it inside our warm tents with our heaters going. In fact Gunnar just started crying at one point...We didn't really know why, but after we took off his jacket and hat, he was happy as could be...I think he was hot! Here he is right before he dropped this ice scoop down my hole... Oops! Seems like something always finds it's way down the hole. Next door in Nate and Brianne's tent their little Alex (who is 2) also dropped their scoop down a hole! But they had a fishing line down that hole and when Nate went to check on it, he thought he'd caught something...and guess what it was??? So funny! The scoop! At least they got it back!
This jig box entertained Gunnar for a good hour and a half......he played and played with it, taking jigs out and putting them back in, asking me what color they were & kissing them and putting them "to bed"!
When we had the tent all closed up and dark, you could see right down into the holes really well and could actually see fish swimming by and see them bite at your jig! Ashton loved that. You know how he just jabbers non-stop...well at one point he's asking us if fish can talk and why we can't hear them talk and on and on and on. Then he says..."hey maybe they speak spanish." Funny kid! Then I hear him saying...here fishy, fishy...come bite my hook and I'll reel you up! And he actually did hook this one......and mostly reeled it in himself (with a little help from Lars). He was so excited! And it was a nice fish! He kept wanting to catch one that we could keep and take home, but they had to be 20 inches or longer and the biggest one was his at 18 inches. Maybe next time Ashton. We had lots of bites and ended up catching about 8 or 9 between us I think. It was such a fun, fun day! We love having our great friends back in Cache Valley with us and the boys all love playing together. Hopefully this will be just the first of many Larsen/Hanson fishing trips. They even took their sweet 3 month old baby Kevin...And he did fine all bundled up! (geez...watch out for my giant black mitten Brianne! hahahaha!) I just have to also say how lucky our boys are to have such a great Dad that will take them (and me) out to do fun stuff like this and who also plays with them from the time he gets home from work till it's time to put them to bed. You're the best hun! Thanks for a great day!