Wetlands for Kids Day

This past weekend John, Grandpa, Aidan, August and I visited the August A. Busch (Yes, Aug-Dog’s namesake!) Memorial Conservation Area to participate in the Wetlands for Kids event, sponsored by the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) and Ducks Unlimited (DU). The event aims to “introduce children to various aspects of the natural world.” For us, most of what we saw was not our first introduction, but we could still enjoy ourselves and learn some things along the way. We saw live birds of prey, snakes, frogs, and turtles. We watched retriever dogs demonstrate their fetching abilities and we sampled some delicious fried catfish caught right from a Missouri river. The boys explored a mock beaver lodge and finally (and to the boys great delight), they got to muck around a lakeshore with nets and look for creatures (we netted two little peepers). Just before we left home, I decided to bring their rain boots and an extra pair of pants. It has been so rainy and I figured there was a high probability that mud would be rampant. I didn’t realize that wading on the shore of a lake was a possibility, so when the opportunity presented itself and I whipped out their boots, well, it made me look like the most prepared mom in the world! (What’s the saying… you can fool some of the people some of the time…?!) I was just so glad for the boys that they could just stomp on in to the muddy mess and not be distracted by the damage they were doing to their clothes. Okay, I was glad that I wouldn’t be distracted by the damage they were doing to their clothes!

If you look at Aidan’s head in the picture you’ll notice the free hat he received when registering for his Ducks Unlimited Greenwing membership. He and August both got one and boy, were they excited. I guess we can officially live in the country now since my boys are the proud owners of camouflage hats!