Takin' a walk in a tomato warning

Well! What a couple of days! Last night I arrived home from my home care job, plopped my tired self into a lawn chair on the beach with my crawling, walking-less toddler in my lap, and sat back to enjoy the dusk. No sooner had my butt hit the wet cushion than all hell broke loose around me and I looked up to see Elijah pull in the biggest damn fish I've ever seen on a hook. Remembering the drama last week when the big one got away, I ran out with baby on one hip and grabbed the net and scooped up the big catch. Wils and Ben were jumping and clapping and Ana was hoofin' it to the house to get Brian.

Turns out this was the very same one that got away, we are pretty sure, because it had a tear mark on it where the hook had been. It also wasn't a walleye...............but at first we couldn't figure out WHAT it was. I thought catfish because it had barbels, but Elijah disagreed. I thought it was just because he wanted it to be a walleye so he could eat it (and that was true). But later he and I did some studying online and successfully identified his catch as a Bowfin, or Dogfish. There is no uglier fish in Minnesota, I don't think. Sadly for Lij, they aren't really edible, but remarkably he was very near the state record for size, with the record holder being 10 pounds and our catch roughly 9!

So tonight I'm at work. There are state-wide Tornado warnings out and we had to sit in a hallway with patients (and patience) for about an hour. Meanwhile, back at the station....(I did that because it sounds like a novel) the troops were gathered in the basement. A certain someone chose that moment to stand up and walk 5 feet. He toddled, stopped, gazed at his starstruck audience, erupted into loud applause for his own self, and fell flat on his butt. I'm told he's been repeating the performance so perhaps this isn't a fluke!