The Last Week

This past week was our last in Northern California before moving to Utah.  Scott and I were very busy with last minute tasks.  On Saturday before the last week of school Matthew had a pool party all afternoon.  We dropped him off and then took the other kids to lunch at Panera.  In the restaurant Grant fell down and hit his head on one of the chairs and got a big bleeding head wound.  We had to change our lunch plans and take him to the ER.  Here he is waiting.  I sat with Grant while Scott took the other kids for smoothies - and brought us some too.

The ER doctor determined that Grant would have to have staples to close the wound.  He had a cut about and inch+ long in the back.  We had to wait a long time at the ER.  Here they put some topical numbing gel on Grant's head and we were waiting for it to take effect.

Grant ended up getting four staples in the back of his head and will have to have them removed in a few days.  He was very brave about it even though it was scary.  Poor Grant!  It was not the kind of adventure we were expecting for our last crazy week.   We covered his head wound with bandaids all week so as not to scare his classmates.  And I'm not posting a picture of the staples on here so I don't scare YOU.  It was a little bit gross.

Scott entertained three other kids in the car while I had Grant in the emergency room.  It was over 90 degrees that day and the ER visit took about 3 hours.

After the ER visit but before picking up Matthew from his pool party we stopped at the garlic ducks statues in town.  There were five little ducklings so we really missed Matthew.  See some of us sitting on the Make Way for Ducklings statues in Boston HERE.

And while we were at the ER or sweating it out in the car, Matthew was at a super fun pool party for his class.

Lucky guy!!

Here's Grant feeling better later in the afternoon after ice cream and getting back to the hotel room

As one of our last Gilroy bucket list items we finally tried the garlic ice cream.  We live in the "Garlic Capital of the World" in case you didn't know.  They grow a lot of garlic in our town and during certain times of year the town does smell like garlic.  

We tried vanilla garlic and chocolate garlic ice cream.  The vanilla garlic ice cream just tasted like badly freezer burned ice cream that had started to take on the other flavors in the fridge (namely garlic).  It was not good.  The chocolate tasted a little better because the garlic flavor was less noticeable.

No one liked the garlic ice cream but now we can say we tried it.

Our house officially went on the market this week.  We had a few little issues with people walking into our backyard and trying to get into the house to see it (put a lock on the gate now) and the smoke alarms going off randomly during the day.  But now things are all good and hopefully we'll get some offers on the house.  We've had a few agents tell our agent they will be submitting offers soon so we'll see.

I'm sad because we have 24 unripe baby peaches on our peach tree and a vine full of baby Concord grapes.  I was hoping we'd get to eat some before we moved.

We made one last trip to Monterey for Ghirardelli ice cream

And walked on the beach a little

Grant wore his hoodie so his head wrapping wasn't as noticeable.  

Here he is doing a little dance on the rocks.

And then we headed into our last week of school.  It was a crazy week.  One of the kids locked the bathroom in the hotel room and we couldn't get it open for a while.  I was proud of myself when I thought to use the inside part of a pen to open it and it worked.

Matthew's class got to go on a fun field trip to Mt. Madonna - a state park and forest in the Santa Cruz mountains only 8 miles or so from our house.  

They had a BBQ and some fun nature hikes.

Matthew had his last scout activity.  His leaders bought him a super huge slurpee as a goodbye.

Wednesday the kids had a fun field day at school 

Here's Matthew doing the sack race

Go Matt!!

Field day included some face painting

Then we had a dentist visit

After that we went to get haircuts.  Grant's mustache survived the dentist.  Grant was glad he didn't have to get a haircut that time because of his head wound.  Bullet dodged!  Then we got frozen yogurt.

Extra points to spot Grant's hand

We took Anna to her last activity day meeting

And went to settle up with the library while we waited for her.

The kids played with duplos in the library while we waited

Then we met Scott for dinner at Panera - the meal we didn't get to have earlier in the week when Grant got hurt.  This time no injuries.  That was a busy day!

Thursday I went in to see Scott's office in Sunnyvale.  It was his last day in the office.

He took me out to lunch at a middle eastern place near his work.  The food was so good!

flat bread and an array of dips

I got something like a middle eastern version of spanakopita

It was good but rich!

Assorted baklava for dessert

Thanks Scott!  He knows what I like!

Scott's office

John was impressed with Scott's standing desk that could go up and down with the press of a button.  After we left, Scott packed up the things in his office and had them shipped to his new office in Salt Lake.

Here are the kids and I waiting at school to pick up our school people on the second to last day of school.  Our time is almost up!

Can you spot Emma peeking through?

Now we just need to make it through the last day of school!!

Man vs. Mouse

When we got back from our Thanksgiving trip to Utah I discovered we had a mouse problem.  I had been cleaning out some things in the garage and started to find evidence of a mouse...or maybe multiple mice.   I cleaned everything up (there had been some bags of snacks left in the garage and they got into some other food we had on the shelves out there) and Scott bought some mouse traps.  He baited them with peanut butter (which has been successful bait for us before in Colorado) and set them all out.

The next morning I went out to the garage before school, checked all the traps (no mice), then got a few things out of the fridge.  As I was pulling milk out of the garage fridge I heard one of the traps snap!!!  It snapped WHLIE I WAS STANDING THERE!!!  I went over to look and there was a little mouse next to the sprung trap.  It didn't get caught in the trap but was bleeding.  It was hiding behind some things so I tried to move stuff so I could shoo it out of the garage, but it ran away...further into the garage.  I checked all the traps a little closer and noticed that they were all licked clean.  The mouse had licked the peanut butter off and only tripped one trap...which didn't even catch him.  I was a bit rattled - hearing the trap snap and seeing the bleeding mouse was unpleasant (in my head I was screaming myself hoarse) - but took the kids to school and came home, went on a run and then rebaited all the traps with more peanut butter.  

Before I went back in the house I was cleaning some things up in the garage for a few minutes, then went back to look at the traps one last time.  One of the traps had been licked clean WHILE I WAS STANDING THERE in the garage!!  I could not believe the brazenness of that mouse.  So cheeky!  I put more peanut butter on the trap and went in.  

In the afternoon, after getting the kids I checked again and we finally caught the little guy in one of the traps.  I was glad the trap worked because I was starting to feel like we were just feeding him peanut butter.  

Scott cleaned everything up when he got home from work (got rid of the dead mouse - THANK YOU SCOTT!!) and got a few more traps to put out in case there were others.  We were hoping it was only one mouse.  

We didn't catch anything the next day but we did notice that our traps were still getting licked clean during the day.  So there were other mice.  Gah!!

The mouse problem was really starting to wear on Scott.  He felt uncomfortable and unsettled about our unwelcome garage guests.  And understandably so.  

Sunday before church (a few days after we caught the mouse) I was out in the garage and distinctly heard some rustling around on one of the shelves.  I called Scott for back up and we started moving stuff around and sure enough, a little gray mouse made a run for it.  We tried to catch him or shoo him out but he was too fast and did not want to leave the garage.  There are a lot of hawks outside in our neighborhood after all so I'm sure his odds are better inside.  So we rebaited all the traps (which had been licked clean again) with more peanut butter, moved some of them to where we had seen the mouse and got ready for church.  Just before leaving for church we found one mouse caught in a trap.  After church we came home to two more caught in a trap.  Scott got rid of the dead mice and brought  home more traps the next day.  I know he will not rest easy until they are all gone.  No mice in the garage!!

Later in the day we caught one more mouse in a trap, bringing our grand total to FIVE MICE!!  The good news is, aside from the fact that we caught those mice, that the traps (of which there are MANY in the garage now) are not getting licked clean as much anymore.  So we hope that means we are winning the war against the mice.  If only slowly.

Part of our "shock and awe" mouse trap arsenal.

Four different kinds of traps.  We ended up with 20 traps set out in the garage, and that's not counting the traps that caught mice and were disposed of.

By Monday (a week or so after getting back from Thanksgiving) we had a full mouse trap arsenal in the garage.  Multiple kinds of traps in multiple locations.  Every few hours I would go check all the traps - half hoping there was nothing there, half hoping there was.   It was kind of horrible.

Monday we caught three more mice, bringing the grand total to EIGHT MICE!!

We got a few more traps and set them out again all baited with peanut butter.  We haven't caught any mice or seen any new evidence of mice since Monday, so we're claiming a tentative victory although all the traps are still in place just in case.  Thank you Scott for disposing of all the dead mice.  I could do it.  If he wasn't here or wasn't willing I definitely would do it but I don't object to his offer of mouse disposal.  

Next step will be to better seal up the little gaps on the garage door where I assume they were getting in.

All week I've had the Elvis song Suspicious Minds in my head ("We're caught in a trap, I can't walk out...").  Here's hoping we have no more mice friends come to stay with us.

Small Gardening

I like the idea of gardening, but I am also lazy.  Or rather I'm busy with a lot of other things, many of which interest me more or are just necessary.    In any case, I've never spent a lot of time trying to get things to grow.  We have a small border of plants at our house here and some of them have not survived the transplanting last fall and/or the winter.  So Scott and I decided to pull out the dead stuff and put in some new things.  We purposely tried to pick plants that would do well here and were supposed to come back on their own each year and require very little maintenance/work (because laziness), but about eight of them died.  The border plants are on a drip system so there are certain spots (where the drip nozzles are) that plants can go.

See our very tiny raised garden in Illinois HERE.  It rains a lot in the summer in Illinois so very little work was required on that garden.  Love it.

This is some of the dead stuff.  Dead lantana I think.  

We also had some lavender die but other lavender plants did well.

We tried to get a variety of things to replace the dead stuff.  I am a sucker for anything that looks remotely like a daisy so we got a lot of that.  Scott had to lobby for some non-daisy like plants.

Here are some of the things before going in the ground.  I think that's a euryops plant in the pot.  They have small yellow daisy like flowers (see my daisy obsession?)  I wanted to get a lot of these but the nursery we went to only had one plant left.  So if anything else dies I might try to replace it with more euryops.  Those seem to do well here.  I see them all over town.

Coreopsis in the back and echinacea closer (two daisy like flowers).

And Scott is putting a camelia bush in the middle.

There it is in the middle

Euryops near, two plants that didn't die in the middle (escallonia like) and purple osteopermum farther away.   Another one that looks like a daisy.

Also some of the plants our landscaper planted are finally looking like they might bloom.  See that stalk going up in the middle?  So excited!!  These ones have been dormant all winter.  This is actually a Shasta daisy I think.  See, I may have a problem.

Two gardenias.

Not daisy like!

Euryops

I check on them all the time since we've planted, hoping that they don't die.

So far, so good.

Osteopermum variety

Arizona blanketflower between two of our hearty lavender plants (daisy anyone?).  I tried to cut back some of the dead leaves which made these lavender plants look a little weird and scrawny.  Maybe I'll just wait until the end of the season.  I am gardening illiterate.

I was reminded of my other domestic failures this week when I tried to hand sew this bunny's head back on.  The kids played with her a little too wildly and her head was hanging by a few threads.  Anna begged for me to let her do the sewing since she learned a few stitches at activity girls.  I should have let her.  After I finished (and it was not pretty - think Franken-bunny) Anna examined the finished product at length and said, "You should have asked Grandma Guptill to do it when she was here."  :) 

So I can't garden or sew very well, and I'm also pretty bad at decorating and cleaning.  But I do cook! That's something. If only learning to decorate were as easy as reading a recipe from a cookbook.  Then maybe I could do it.  Oh well.

Small Gardening Update!!

Today we added a grapevine to our very small selection of plants.  It's a concord variety.  We were going to get a green variety too but decided on just one for space reasons.  Hoping it does well.

Some of our almost dead lantana has been coming to life lately.  We left a few nearly dead lantana plants because they were showing signs of life.  And now they are growing!

Another lantana plant, back from the dead.

Some succulents we got for inside the house.  We transplanted some and are awaiting pots for others.  The pot on the left has some new pumpkin seeds in it.  If they grow we will have to get a larger container to put them in.  We'll cross that bridge if we get to it.  Anna and I also planted some herb seeds that came in a little window box set.  We'll see how those do.

We have some gravel between the garage door and yard that is very uncomfortable to walk over barefoot.  I wanted to get some paver stones to make a little walk way and finally got some today.  I found out this afternoon that they get very hot in the sun, so still hard to walk across barefoot in the heat of day.  :)

Our front porch got a little sprucing.  We used to have nothing out there but a few months ago I added a bench because the neighborhood kids will sometimes gather on the front step.  I added a few pillows for sitting on or against, the little plastic Adirondack chair for kid seating and the blue planter stand for a small table or seat - sometimes there are drinks or rainbow loom supplies that need a place to be.  I want to get a little wicker pouf (like this one) for sitting or putting feet or things on.  So I'll keep my eye out for a good deal.

Got two planters that I filled with succulents too.

See that's me trying to make things look nice.

Another view.  Not that the neighborhood kids will really care.  But I care.  

Hope it's functional for the kids at least.