It’s the Bradshaw Family Annual Beach Week.  This is my favorite week of the year, followed closely by Shark Week on the Discovery Channel and if the two coincide then I’ve died and gone to heaven.

This week is so important to me for a couple reasons.  First, I don’t have to worry about work.  That’s right, for seven straight days I’m not obligated to care about anything work related.  You can make the argument that writing is working but come on, I went fishing this morning and now I get to tell you about it.  How is that really work?

If my cell phone rings I don’t have to answer it.  If I get an email I don’t have to respond to it.  I make laziness look good for one week a year.  Heck, I didn’t even bring a razor and shoes are optional. Second, I get to fish for as many hours as I want to without feeling guilty about not spending time with my family because they are on the beach with me and that leads to the point of this blog, spending time with our kids outdoors.

Your kid, or the kid down the block, really wants to spend time with you hunting, fishing, or hiking. Every last one of them without exception wants to be a kid and spending time outdoors is what kids come by naturally.  They just need you to ask them to go.  It’s that simple.  Take the time out of your own fishing or hunting trip to pass along the experience to a kid.  You won’t be sorry and just might create a hunter/fishing partner for life.  This point was driven home this week when my sister mentioned my nephew skipped classes at Boy Scout Camp to go fishing.  This kid has been on every beach trip to date and hasn’t expressed any interest in fishing, but deep down he really wants to go and proved it when given the opportunity.  So this week, we’re going to try and earn his “I caught a fish big enough to eat me” badge.

The fishing this week has started slowly with only one fish hitting so far, but it was huge.  I can say that because it got away and you can’t prove it wasn’t huge.  So according to my imagination, it was a massive bull shark that hit a mullet and smoked my reel only to destroy the leader I was using that wasn’t built for handling a fish that big.

I plan to teach my nephew how to lie too.