This weekend I kept the boys busy. On Saturday, we headed to Cold Spring, MN for a farm visit with a high school friend. Before we made it to the farm, we couldn’t resist a short detour to the famous Cold Spring bakery on Main Street. I fondly remember a few childhood visits there and enjoying frosted donuts on a stick. There were no frosted donuts this time, but it was so crowded that we had to take a number and could barely see the treats before it was time for us to select them. Each boy got to pick one treat, except for Jude, who naturally talked me into getting him two (but under the condition that I’d get to try both of them). Fair trade, it seemed to me.
The boys had fun playing at the farm. They played with my friend’s 3 kids, avoided the dog, counted the cats, stared at the 170-some heifers who were jumping on each other’s backs to see them as well, played in a hay loft and climbed the hay bales.
After fun at the farm, we headed to Mike and Sara’s for Mike’s birthday celebration and fishing. Mike has no interest in fishing, but thankfully Sara does. My boys, especially Jude, are obsessed with fishing. They fished for 3-1/2 hours that first day, in light rain, and caught 25 fish (24 sunnies and 1 perch).  Two were keepers. The boys kept Sara hopping with baiting their hooks and transporting the fish into the temporary keep bin to counting later.
We spent that night at my parents’ house and spend the morning hunting for bait.  Grandpa Forbes and the boys and I dug for a back-breaking length of time for earth worms that were hiding in their garden. We got a nice load of them, but still made a trip to buy 100 wax worms from a nearby gas station, just in case. Good thing we did. That 2nd day of fishing was raining heavier than the 1st, but they didn’t keep the boys from fishing or the fish from biting. They caught a couple dozen more sunnies on day 2. Even though Levi began baiting his own hook on day 2, Sara was in high demand, with a pole in her face constantly for fish removal or bait application.