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The grandson's choice Saturday afternoon was to either stay home and get up at 4:30 in the morning to go coyote hunting with their father or go to grandpa and Nanna's house and hang around with them doing whatever they choose to do. Trevor loves to coyote hunt and chose to stay home. Zane, being more like his grandfather when it comes to appreciating a full night's sleep, decided to come to our place. He knew we had nothing planned, but always find something to do.

Sunday morning, about 6 AM, I took my laptop out to the porch to check email and drink a cup of coffee. It was warm with just a slight breeze blowing. I was sure I could get in an hour or so of work before the day officially started. The turkeys' gobbling in the nearby timber made it difficult to think about work rather than turkey hunting. I was concentrating on the deep raspy voice of a nearby gobbler when the door opened behind me. Zane, cup of coffee in hand, was up and ready to help me. There is little help required in responding to business correspondence so it did not take long for him to become bored. Since it was almost light out, he suggested we go fishing. Thinking about the calm surface of the lake, the warm early morning temperatures, and the business email; I decided there will be few days of our lives like this that Zane and I can share. There will always be emails, but there will not always be warm spring days a grandson wants to go fishing with his grandpa. "We can do that," I said as I shut down the computer. Nanna woke up as we were changing from sweat suits to fishing clothes and said she would come too.

We launched the boat and motored silently across the surface of the lake as the sun rose behind us. Zane caught a nice sized crappie before we were fifty feet from the dock. "Should we keep it and have a fish fry for lunch?" We could do that. I have learned from years of fishing experience to never throw back the first fish if it is of edible size and variety. If a person throws back the first, then the second, before long, the fish really start biting and half a meal has been released. If that was the only fish we caught for the day, we could always release him when we returned to the dock. It turned out to not be the only fish. Nearing the island, my wife started catching them. I can catch big fish, little fish, crappie, bass, and bluegills. That is fine with Zane. If Nanna gets ahead of him in numbers, the competition is on. By the time we started to desperately need breakfast, we had all caught quite a few fish.

We released everything except the crappie. Coming fresh from the cold water of our own lake, the flavor is unbeatable. I filled a bucket full of water, put our future lunch in the shade, and went in for breakfast.

While eating, we noticed several male bluebirds fly by the windows. Zane suddenly remembered we needed to clean our houses for the new nests. We could do that. After breakfast, the three of us piled in the Gator and made the round of bluebird houses cleaning as we went. We got them all ready for the new crop of babies and were feeling quite good about a job well done until we pulled up to the garage to see the crappie that we left swimming in a bucket were spread across the driveway. Duke had eaten several after dumping the bucket and the rest were getting dry and nasty.

We decided, a roast beef sandwich would be good for lunch. Not everything works out as planned but with the right attitude, most things do. We can do that.[[In-content Ad]]

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