Westlake Park

We decided it was time to branch out and try to find a new fishin' hole. Ray did some research and learned that the best local lake for catfish was Lake Lewisville.

We looked at a map of Lake Lewisville and found the name of a park to try. It was great! We went on a Friday so it wasn't crowded at all. We were surprised at how cheap it was, only $3 for all of us! And they even gave the kids complimentary coloring books and crayons.

We found a nice picnic table right by the water and set up. We had lunch and then fished right next to our table. Sweet! We were fishing in the shade! We also looked at some of the books we recently checked out from the library.

After a while, I took the four youngest and we headed to the beach area to swim. It was just a short walk away. We had a blast in the water and it gave Ray and Nehemiah a chance to fish without little "helpers" and constant cries of "I'm snagged!" or "I can't get this fish off my hook!" or "I hooked my own shirt!" or "Help me hook this worm!"
On our way to the water we found a dead fish which we promptly inspected using a stick. We also saw a catfish head. When we were in the water we saw several grasshoppers. Samara and I caught them and put them on our heads. We declared ourselves "Grasshopper Princesses"! All of us looked closely at the grasshoppers and talked about how long their legs are and how far they can jump. We talked about their antennae and how they can sense things compared to how we sense things. We also talked about where grasshoppers live. Seth and Samara assumed they must live in the water since that's where we found them. Isaiah and Malachi knew they lived on land and explained it to the twins. One of the big ones jumped on Seth and scared the crap out of him! Poor baby! He's the most squeamish around creepy crawly things and they always seem to head for him! We saw some minnows swimming around us and wondered what other things were swimming close to us. The kids wanted to know why there were cold spots in the water which was something I couldn't explain. We performed tricks for each other, stuff like handstands and flips. Malachi got some water up his nose and said he wished he didn't have a nose. I laughed and told him that then he couldn't smell and that would be weird! We made jokes about all the situations he might be in where he would hate the fact that he couldn't smell, like smelling good food or cake, or freshly cut grass, or poop! We all had a good laugh about that one.
Since this was only a day use park, we had to leave by 10pm. When darkness came Malachi caught a small toad. Samara loved it and wanted to bring it home with her.

We stayed as late as we could as you can tell. Here's Nehemiah's silhouette still fishing in the dark.