When your children (and the wind-chill) dash your dreams.

February 2, 2013 by Michelle | 3 Comments

It happens to all of us.

You plan a wonderfully fun activity with your kids, telling them how much fun it will be as they jump up and down, excited for the excursion.

You envision the laughing you’ll do and the wonderful memories you’ll make as you get everyone ready to go.

And an hour and a half later, you’ve just experienced possibly the 3rd worst idea you’ve had all year.

That is how my morning went.

It started out fun enough:

“Hope they’re biting today” was the caption of this photo.

Well, it did bite.

The whole, pipe-dream of an ice fishing adventure we took.

The night before, we had planned to go and the boys were excited–even going to bed relatively well because we told them “you need your rest for ice fishing tomorrow”!

But, by the next morning, I watched as my husband and my hopeful dream of having a nice family day of ice fishing began to slowly crumble.

It began in the truck.  Doe (our younger son) kept whining and carrying on about anything and everything:  he was hungry; his car seat was too tight; he wanted to get out of the truck; Si wasn’t sharing.  And Si, our older son:  I’m sick of being in the truck; when are we going to get out?

Si, stop kicking my seat!  Doe, we will eat in the shanty!  Be patient!!

After an hour, my husband’s usually long fuse was wearing thin.

After getting some sandwiches for our fishing-shanty-lunch, we finally get on the ice and into our portable shanty.  The heater’s on, we’ve gotten our yummy sandwiches out and have drilled our holes– only to find that we can see the bottom of the lake.  We finish our sandwiches and pack back up.

So begins Move #1.  So begins the boys loudly protesting the move and not understanding why it’s happening.

We get settled again.  The wind, has suspiciously picked up quite a bit, making it biting cold.   Coincidence?  Or, just another added touch to our already dwindling hopes and dreams.

We drill our holes, get back inside, get comfortable, look down into our holes and realize that, again, the water is no deeper than we are tall.

So begins Move #2.  So continues the boys’ (and us) feeling frustrated.

By now, the wind has picked up even more, Doe is ramping up the whining and carrying on until it’s become a full-blown crying and screaming session.

We get them out of the shanty, but the wind begins to blow it all over the ice and this is where the fun really began.

One almost-4-year-old screaming and crying that he’s cold and wants to go home; A 5-and-a-half year old freaking out because his gold-fish have been blown all over the ice, a portable fishing shanty that is being blown here and there by the wind, that just so happened to pick up as soon as we got on the ice; a beyond frustrated daddy, who worked so hard to try to give us a fun day, desperately trying to hold on to the shanty and get it back under control and a mom, looking at the entire scene thinking, “this is so not how I pictures this happening”.

Obviously our children don’t intend to rain on our parade–but they do, simply because they’re kids and they get cold easier and they aren’t quite able to tolerate hard feelings yet and because when it’s 10 degrees out with whipping wind–well, it just plain sucks.

We pack up, make our way back across the ice, hop back into the truck and head home.  We’ve been gone two hours total.  4 holes were drilled, no children got to fish and no fish were even remotely caught.

As husband and I veg-out in the living room watching bad t.v., he remarks, “That was a lot of work just to eat a sandwich”.

Word up honey.

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