Morel Mushroom Motherload

Sunday after Church I took Mae and Noah to Wildlife Prairie Park while Drake and Momma took a little nap. We saw the new little bison that was just born that morning, tried to entice the wolves from their midday slumber with some rabbit squealing, and went down the big slide a few times....Wildlife Prairie Park is an absolute blast:



Then we went over to Jared's and met up with Chad and Justin to do some mushroom hunting. Earlier in the day I was trying to convince Mae and Noah to come in the woods with me to do some mushroom hunting and they weren't exactly enthused about the concept....The day before they had just done some garage saleing and tasted a bit of shopping with real money...Mae bought some basketballs for a quarter and Noah bought a superman costume with wig with his own money...

I bring that up because the stage was set for me to offer them some money and for it to mean something to them... Some of you may be thinking negative thoughts here, but I think me offering them a quarter for every mushroom they find was perhaps life changing... They were so excited to get out into the woods to find their first mushroom they could hardly contain themselves...When Mae finally did find her first mushroom about one hour into the hunt she was 1000 times more excited than any easter egg hunt ever....

We stomped through the woods for 1.5 hrs with Mae, Noah, Drake, and Mom and only one mushroom to show for our efforts...Granted most of my time and energy was spent just focussing on the adventure of helping the kids hike through the woods, find our sticks, climb over logs, and under stickers, thru the creeks and such...They were troopers and hanging in there way better than I ever expected, especially with only finding one mushroom.....until we hit the MOTHERLOAD!!



A goal of mine is to spend time with my kids outdoors as much as humanly possible. I want my kids to want to be with me outside throughout their whole lives. Its definitely not easy, and it takes tons of patience along with a splash of creativity to keep them entertained while out in the field, but the longterm payoff hopefully will make it all worth it!!!

For Drake we were out in the woods looking for not only mushrooms, but deer as well. Drake and I play pretend deer hunting just about every day... For Noah he was a little explorer, tougher than any stick, log or thorn and he used his musles any chance he could get...For Mae she was dreaming of finding treasure, the pot of gold, the endless quarters....she kept asking how much 20 mushrooms was worth, 50, and even 100!!!

So we were about to give up after our little adventure when we hit one last spot...Amy and Jared had found a nice little mess of mushrooms earlier in the day and I know from experience that there are always some crumbs leftover no matter how good you scour... Our only hope of finding a couple mushrooms with the kids was to go to this spot and clean up the scraps....

Well when we got there we searched for a few minutes and finally found the couple mushrooms I was so hoping for and Mae was PUMPED!! Then as we meandered down the way we found what us morel mushroom hunters DREAM of...The MOTHERLOAD!!! Everywhere we looked in a 40x100' section was mushrooms...



Drake was picking em like crazy while Mae and Ria were filling their bags!! I didnt even pick one...just sat back and thanked God for that blessing to enjoy this experience with my kids and nieces!! 322 mushrooms from one spot...


They counted em up and I had Mae and Ria cut and prep them all for dinner:


I made good on my promise to the kids (with a little fuzzy math), but they are each getting $11 to spend next time they go garage saleing....They are chomping at the bit to get back out mushroom hunting and even though they are hooked for life, I still told them that for every mushroom they find it still equals a quarter....

Drake is too young to care about the money yet, but as I tucked him in tonight, he whispered how he wants to go mushroom hunting tomorrow!!!!!!!!!