Having older kids has it perks. Even though I say to the kids at least once a day they are growing too fast I do love the stage they are in right now. For Mother’s Day this year they really did good – one of those older kid perks 😉

I had gone to a murder mystery dinner with some friends the night before Mother’s Day and while there, Greg took the kids grocery shopping to prepare for the day.

In the morning Greg and I got to enjoy a nice dip in the hot tub while the kids cooked breakfast. They made breakfast burritos (forgot to get a pic dang it) they were delicious.

I love eating on the deck so we turned on the fire table (was still wet from the hot tub so needed warmth) and enjoyed breakfast. It was awesome! While eating Jayse was putting his head awfully close to the fire as he leaned in to take a bite. At one point he leaned a little too close. He said to us umm I think I caught my hair on fire. Just very casually, I was like what?! Sure enough when we looked at his hair he had singed the top part of his hair. Because he was ok we all had a good laugh about it.

After breakfast we got ready to go to CJ Strike reservoir. I had been wanting to go out on the boat and I like CJ Strike because of the amount of birds you see there. The weather was a bit colder then it had been but that is ok we weren’t going to swim.

We got to the reservoir about 11.

After we got the boat in the water and all situated we got in and took off towards bird island. It did not disappoint! I purchased a new lens recently. It’s the same was the one I’ve borrowed from my friend. A 150-600mm, it was a good lens to shoot these birds. We were able to get pretty close with the boat. I tell you it is hard to shoot from a boat! With it moving all the time – Jayse didn’t help as he was all over the place casting. I took almost 500 pictures of just the birds and 150 of them were in focus and I liked about 40 of those.

It was a great time of year for the birds because they all had babies! We saw Blue Heron, Pelicans & Double-Crested Cormorants.

When I had my fill of picture taking we boated over to a little inlet to eat lunch. Greg and the kids had planned burgers, hot dogs and potato salad. They did a great job planning and remembering almost everything (always forget a spatula and ketchup). Greg set up the grill on the front of the boat and cooked up some hamburgers and hot dogs. Jaelee chilled under a bunch of towels and Jayse continued to cast and try fishing. We had a delicious lunch, they made potato salad the night before! Yumm, it was a great lunch.

Just as we were finishing our food the clouds turned really dark and some crazy wind started. We decided we better get out of there rather than be caught out on the water in that weather. It was a bumpy ride back to the dock. The wind was creating big waves on the water but we made it before the rain started. We were only there for a couple of hours. We were back on the road to home by 1:30.

This is bird island, I know it’s hard to tell but this thing was covered in birds!

Jayse took these pictures of me and Jaelee. Aren’t they fun?