Fishing Trip Gone Bad

Last month we did a series of FHE lessons based around charity and showing love to people. As part of this we started a love jar. Every time we caught the kids showing love we would write it on a paper and stick it in the jar. Once we got the jar filled up the plan was to go fishing and eat some ice cream together. The boys filled up the jar a few days ago and tonight we finally had some time and the weather was nice, so we decided to go check that off our list. I picked up some worms at the store, we ate dinner real fast, and headed out. We decided to try out a different fishing spot today. This place the water is really deep right up to the shore line and there's a good place for the kids to stand and fish in some better water than the shallow muck we usually get at Maxey Park.
   Things started off well. The sun was shining, the guy fishing next to us caught a fish, Matthew was sure he was getting lots of bites, Landon was in heaven plopping his worm in and out of the water, and Koyle was loving his perch up on a big rock practicing his big casts.
   Koyle got a little too confident apparently because on his next cast his pole went flying right into the water. Luckily (or rather, not luckily) Justin was standing near by and he quickly reached with his pole to try and save Koyle's pole before it sank down to the bottom. In his efforts to do so, he leaned down to grab it and his phone, which he didn't realize was in his scrubs shirt pocket, slid right down into the water. He reached for his phone and dropped not only Koyle's pole, but also his own fishing pole into the lake. So now we were down two poles, and a BRAND NEW iphone that he just got to start residency. (They required him to be on a Verizon plan and have an iphone which meant he had to switch plans and get a new phone...) Funny thing is it was nearly 10 minutes before he even realized that he had lost his pole because he was so upset and worried about the phone. The water is at least 8 feet deep and very murky. There was no retrieving the phone. The nice guy next to us saw what happened and offered kind words. He miraculously was able to fish out BOTH the poles by hooking them with his pole. So that made things a little better. Justin was obviously very upset and frustrated, and immediately felt the burden of having to replace the phone. After a few minutes he regrouped himself enough to attempt to continue helping the boys fish. He started digging through the cup of worms to bait their hooks again, and there were no worms. No joke, the cup of worms I bought had come with only ONE worm. Stupid Wal*Mart ripped us off. So now we had no bait, and dad was not in the mood for improvising. The boys did not want to be finished since we had just started, but it just wasn't meant to be. So after literally only about 15 minutes of "fishing" we packed up and headed home.
   Tomorrow (well maybe not tomorrow, but someday) it will be a funny story. Tonight, we are once again crunching our numbers even tighter as we figure out what our options are. Not sure we were feeling the love from our love jar tonight, but at least we tried.