A Fish Tale

I had one of those mom moments I hope I don't soon forget. It was just so funny! As a mom of 5 it is SO easy for me to forget what I'm doing. I find 1/2 finished tasks all over the house and realize it was HOURS ago I worked on them. How could I forget for so long?
So when it comes to cleaning out the fish pond in the front yard, I try to always set a timer so I don't pay for hours of water running from the hose. We bought 20 new feeder goldfish a few weeks ago and we couldn't see them anymore because the water had become murky. The way I clean our pond is to overflow it with the hose. I was concerned the newbie fish would flow out with the water, but I went ahead with my plan to clean it and set the timer in the house for 12 minutes.
Well, lets just say I didn't hear the timer go off. By the time I realized the pond was still "cleaning," the whole ditch in the driveway was filling with water! I ran out to turn off the water to the now crystal clear pond and saw a glint of orange in the floating mulch!!! Oh, no! The fish DID flow out! I ran back in the house for the little fish net and back out to the yard. I saw two gold fish and one white one. I chased them with the net-trapping them next to rocks and such. They were determined to evade me! After getting the 3 fish into the pond I started running my fingers through the floating mulch to see if I could find more fish. Since it was late afternoon most of the fish were hiding in their pvc tunnel, so I had no idea how many of the 14(those that survived living in our pond) had escaped! At this point my neighbor "D" came over to see what in the world I was doing frantically looking through my mulch! It was too funny, really! I spent 20 minutes searching for 13 cent goldfish because I couldn't stand the thought of killing a living thing that wasn't a bug! I knew the kids would be so upset if one of our fish died because it ended up flopping around in the mulch in suffocation! After a while we gave up and I am happy to report that the next morning at feeding time we counted 14 fish!
I have included a picture here of our pond with Domino the cat and Leah. Thankfully in almost 5 years of living here, only Lizzy has fallen into the pond-and that was a month ago when she was trying to help Jacob get his ball! Yesterday we went to my cousin's baby shower where they had vases of dyed water with goldfish in them. Guess who's daughter's brought home 11 more fish for the pond???? Yep, I am the proud owner of 25 pond goldfish, 3 betta's, a Florida box turtle and one very independant cat named Domino! This is the life!