Awwww...I'm so happy the piccies were enjoyed!

M&mickey, nope, never even seen the Pacific Ocean but I'd sure love to visit California, especially any awesome aquariums I've seen on tv where you can walk through like a glass tunnel and see the ocean life. Heck I'd be thrilled just to watch what remains when the tide goes out, crabs or starfish or whatnot.

Mooseman, my kids have a bit of a melanin advantage . Me too ('italian' skin) so outdoors is never a problem. Dh is very dark...he says that if he got any darker he'd be dust. Hee hee. Oh, and he liked your book too!!!

Moose53, yes, Vince is darn big. He's 10, 5'4" and wears a men's size 9 1/2...I sure hope our state has a waiver program for clothes and shoes for him by the time he's in high school, lol! Carmen is average for her age, she's 9. And yep, we eat them. We say a prayer thanking God for the fish, and the fish for giving their lives for us to eat and be nourished by them, we all hold hands. It's a nice sort of bonding moment. Fishing is so different to have something alive and choose to kill it to eat it, than it is to buy it in a nice clean guilt free package at the grocery store with no eyes looking at you. We all appreciate a meal more since we started fishing, just makes you think about 'meat' differently, especially about waste and wasting. The parts we don't eat we divi up to our fish (raw), or cook for our rats who eat the bones too (calcium!). Not the skin though, cause of PCB's. But pretty much everything else is used.

Isabelle, I'm trying to get fake lures that work. I don't like stabbing a worm through the hook either...although if it was life or death and I had no alternative, I'd have no problem with it at all. Fish really seem to like these fake black stinky leeches. When I catch one I need to throw back cause it's too small, but, while I'm taking the hook out I pop a worm in his mouth. I mean, geez, that's the least I can do after hooking him. Also, before we leave, we throw a few worms in where ever we fish to sort of give back, I kind of want to get that feeling in my kids so they realize when they are taking and learn to give back too. Know what I mean?

LIZARD! Heyyyyyy! Glad you liked the piccies.