The Fishing Pond

The Fishing Pond
For a couple of years now, as my boys get older, I’m finding it harder to connect with them. Just recently, I found a fishing pond near our house that reminded me of the lake my father and I went to as a child growing up. I used to love the feeling of catching my own fish and bringing something home for my family to enjoy for dinner. So I wanted to pass on that memory to my boys with taking them to the fishing pond.
The fishing pond is where my children and I can go to get away from the video games and the TV distractions. My boys, if I let them, could “veg-out” in front of a TV all day and not think twice about it. Other distractions could be my boys’ friends wanting them to come out and play or ride the bikes around the neighborhood. If they were to do that, I would have to hang up any chance of getting out on the pond for that day. They also have a skate park right up the road that they could take the bikes to and ride half pipes, rails, and ramps. Again, that would take them away from us being able to have some good bonding time. One day I decided to go home a different way than normal, one of my neighbors had told me about this wonderful fishing pond near the house.
The pond is located just around the corner from the house within walking distance. While walking to the pond is really only about a mile from the house, we walk by a park that my three year old son absolutely loves to play at. It has a jungle gym, slides, swings, and a weird plastic bridge. They have a play gym set up just like a pirate ship, so when my three year old gets on it his creative mind really starts going. This can be a good thing and also a bad thing for us. What I haven’t mentioned yet is this park is right next to the pond. This is the biggest distraction of all because you can see the park from in between the fence slats. So for my three year old, as anyone with children his age, he no attention span and keeping him focused on fishing is very hard. One...