Dying Fish

Today I headed out to Goldstream Park for the Salmon Run. I knew it was almost over, so was not expecting to see much. I bundled my little ones up in muddy buddies, grabbed some snacks and the baby carrier (love love love my ergo) and off we went for a drive. Once we got there, the parking meter was not working. I looked in another parking lot, ran into a park attendant and he said not to worry about paying. Now how often does that happen in Victoria? The city that is queen of pay parking??? Needless to say, I was happy and off we wnet in search of giant puddles to galosh in.
We got to the stream and it was severly full. Of water that is, not salmon. The banks were a bit flooded over, but nothing too major. There were dead white salmon floating here and there, a reminder of the life cycle for all of us. My little one did not mind seeing the fish in the water as some of them were still alive, and she could not tell which ones were dead. There were a few on the ground around us, and I decided to not show them to her. Mainly because I was kinda creeped out looking at the eye sockets that were eaten out and crazy pointy things coming out of the gill areas. I'm not too big on dead things (I am petrified of zombies and all that jazz), probably stemming from growing up on a farm and having to deal with dead animals now and then.
Anyways, we wound our way up to the Nature House and enjoyed a mug of hot chocolate, watched a great dvd projected big screen about local parks (which we bought because my 3 yr old said she really liked the smiley white haired man who likes eagles...) and I'm trying to encourage watching shows that are more informational rather than...Cars or Dora or Pocoyo or... you get the idea. We got back to the car - and this was after I discovered that I can, in fact, carry a 10 month old in my ergo carrier on my back AND carry a 3 year old on my shoulders at the same time. We were warm, dry and ready to have snacks on the way home while we talked about the park. Not too bad in my opinion!

And for the cooking portion - I made baked beans as per my husband's request from scratch. They were ok. But I used cayenne pepper instead of chili pepper. Oops. Dh and I thought it was good, but the kids ended up having bacon and veggies for dinner instead :) I do have another recipe that I just got for baked beans from a family friend that I'm going to try out next month!