Paint and Pixels

This Marks the Beginning of Summer Break...

At the beginning of each summer since we've lived in Colorado, the kids and I have made a trip to the pond near our house to collect tadpoles that we intend to raise into frogs. As tradition has it, we end of killing the tadpoles a couple days later (not intentionally). This year, we kept the first part of the tradition but would like to break the second part (the killing part).
So yesterday, we made our way to the pond and this time we brought along our dear cousins Milo and Lucy, and their beautiful momma, Sarah, who took pictures for us (except for this first one, obviously).


The kid in the helmet is not ours. But he kept getting into our pictures and warned us repeatedly that there were rattle snakes around here. Friggin know-it-all, safety-conscious, suburban helmet-wearing kids... that's why we're planning on moving inward when the opportunity arises.


Rocket always starts out at the edge of the pond, and ends up somewhere near the middle of the pond in an attempt to catch a frog.



To his dismay, the frogs were a little too quick for him this year (as opposed to last year). But he DID catch this friggin colossal tadpole!! We think it was dead, although Milo claims he saw it swim away, so maybe it was just playing dead, who knows. I didn't know that tadpoles even got this big before turning into frogs, but if they do, maybe we DON'T want all of our tadpoles to survive!


In this picture I appear to be taking my tadpole catching job very seriously... and I certainly do.


Milo and Roxy on the way home... ain't that precious?!

These are the new strategies we are implementing this year to try to get our tadpoles to survive:

1. Put them in a glass bowl instead of a plastic one because plastic releases poisonous things (like BPA I think).
2. Include some pond gunk and plants so that they feel more at home and the transition from pond to glass bowl is less shocking.
   
3. Don't leave them outside on a windy day.
   
4. Don't change their water.
5. Don't pet them too much.
   
6. Don't feed them stuff from our fridge or pantry.
   
7. Pray over them nightly.
   
8. Any other suggestions? We're desperate.