Minnesota Vacation Part 4

After spending 3 days together with just the 7 of us, we were excited to hear that grandma and grandpa were on the road and would be joining us late Tuesday evening. The boys were very excited and waited outside for them on the deck.
It was good to have them up there. Joel, Will and Jake went fishing every morning. The Northerns were really biting this year. Each day they caught a stringer full. This picture was taken Tuesday morning when Will went out by himself.
These pictures were taken over the next couple days. This was a good haul!
This particular batch of fish has a story with it. Can you pick out the injured fish? The third fish from the left has a bite missing. Here it is a little closer.The guys had their fish tied up to the dock one night. We decided to have a fire and spend some time with the kids before Will and Joel headed down to the fish house to clean them. Tony decided to walk out onto the dock and started yelling that there was giant turtle eating the fish. Everyone ran out on the dock and we saw the biggest.turtle.ever. It truly was the largest turtle I have ever seen that wasn't in a zoo.

It's head was as big as a softball and it's feet were bigger than my own hands. It had clamped down on one of the Northerns. Grandpa tried to shake it off without any luck. The turtle finally bit threw the fish and left. We quickly pulled the fish out of the water. Thankfully we caught it early and it only damaged one fish.

We decided to let that one fish go and see if the turtle would come back and eat it. Will tossed it into the water and within minutes the turtle emerged and snagged the fish. It is hard to see but the fish is in his mouth. His tail was as long as the fish!The picture really doesn't do it justice because it was so huge.


After the turtle incident we decided to light up some small fireworks and let the kids do some sparklers. I found some race cars that had little shooting sparklers on them. We had a competition between the boys to see who's car would win. Winning consisted of having the least amount of damage. Tony's car ended up the winner.
Even though the kids were a little freaked out about the turtle, it ended up being a really good night.