I was trying to get my mom to come down for a weekend to help out while Matt was out of town. Our communications about the plan miserably failed and she (and Grandpa!) ended up coming the weekend before Matt was leaving.
Oops!
I was clearly unprepared, so I had to run to the grocery store for supplies. Henry had been asking to make a cake, so I picked up a single layer cake kit for him while I was there. He had fun making it all by himself, but there were complaints about the cake being too small…
Grandpa was apparently very jealous of Nonni’s stories of crabbing with us in Galveston last month. He had mentioned he would like to try to go crabbing next time he was in town. Which is suddenly now! ;)
In trying to avoid the 2 hour drive to Bolivar, I scoped us out a new site on the Texas City Dike.
We had chairs and we had nets and we even had chicken wings for the nets. But we didn’t have much shade…
We had amazing luck catching crabs!
Well… That’s if you count hermit crabs…
We struggled to catch any blue crabs, but at one point my net came up with at least 10 hermit crabs!
Grandpa was dedicated to the crabs! He tried putting his net down in various locations, but to no avail.
We also managed to lose several nets - I think we need a better system for the kids to hold onto the string. Also I think tying the end of the strings onto a cut pool noodle is going to be a game changer. I saw someone do it on a crabbing Facebook group and I think it would have saved at least one of the nets if we had been able to grab a floating string.
We did manage to catch one big dude, but ended up giving him away… We didn’t figure we could split him seven ways for dinner!
But the day was saved with an awesome lunch at a tiny restaurant on the marina. They might have had the best fried mushrooms I’ve ever had in my life. I definitely ate more than my fare share!
And since there was so much grumbling about the chocolate cake being too small, I helped the boys make another one for after dinner tonight. I can neither confirm nor deny that the boys were eating the extra icing. Evidence clearly points in one direction though…
Sorry the crabbing was so terrible and I’m not great at communicating, dear parents. It was great to see you anyhow and we’ll catch them all next time!