Soon after Thanksgiving, I walked into our garage at night and when I flicked on the light switch, I heard a scrabbling sound of something moving quickly.  The next day Toby told me that she had heard some movement as well.  Later, I saw that one of my Cup-O-Noodles containers had a hole in it and was missing most of the contents.

I went to Lowe’s and looked for some method of eradication that would not take any involvement on my part.  I bought a set (3) of the little things that plug into the wall and create an ultrasonic noise that is supposed to drive the rats away.  The instructions say that each unit will keep about 400 sq ft rodent free.  I had 3 so I plugged all three into different outlets in my ~400 sq ft garage.  If 1 was effective, then 3 should work even better, right?  Well, no, actually.  After 2 weeks of 24 hr ultrasonic noise, we were still hearing noises in the garage, and now it was beginning to smell bad in there.

Back at Lowe’s, I looked at other extermination methods.  We’ve had good luck with traditional snap traps , but the size of rat traps (compared to mouse traps) was very scary.  You could lose a finger in one of those things.  I decided to go with the poison.  I set out 4 or 5 trays in various places in the garage, and warned the kids not to touch them.

The next day, spilled in the middle of the garage floor was a tray of poison that I had put in the rafters.  I think the rats must have known what it was and pushed it out of their area.  It didn’t look like the poison was going to work.  But the box said that the poison took 4-5 days to work, so I waited.

5 days after the poison was emplaced, I walked into the garage, and saw a lump of brown fur about the size of a softball.  It was huge.  I banged a piece of metal (a 6 foot section of galvanized water pipe, to be exact) on the cement next to it and it didn’t move, so I assumed it was dead.  Now there is a lot of stuff in my garage and this was really the only section of the floor that I can easily see.  Thank the Lord that the rat chose to die in that spot.

This was a big rat and I sort of freaked out.  I stood and stared at it for about 5 minutes.  I went and got the trash can and a shovel, but then couldn’t scoop the thing up.  I had visions of it running up the shovel handle at me.  Luckily, I have a partner who has given an oath to be with me through the thick and thin.  I went and got Toby.  She scooped the rat up and tossed it in the trashcan with only a minimum of mockery.

The next night, I went into the garage and the rat was back, full sized, in the exact same place as before.  But this time it was walking in circles.  Toby wasn’t available, and Max was already asleep so had to man up.  I got a 5 gallon paint bucket and turned it over to trap the bugger.  The next night we had a rat throwing away party, and I did the honors with the shovel (the one with the longest handle, not the short handled spade Toby used the night before).

After these two rats were gone, I stopped hearing noises.  Whew!  Now we just had to wait for the garage to air out and get rid of the wild animal smell.  But alas, the wild animal smell was being replaced by the smell of decaying flesh.  I hunted down what turned out to be the final rat and showed Max and Lucy how to scoop it up (from a safe distance).

It has been about 2 weeks and the garage is starting to lose its nasty smell.  I think I have prevailed, this time.

This turned out to be one of our least structured vacations in a while.  After a rapid start of tubing and ski school, the rest of the week was unplanned.  On Wednesday, the kids stayed with Gran and GranDon.  They made a snow man together.  Later Lucy and Gran worked on learning to weave using a small loom Gran gave Lucy for Christmas while Max and GranDon went to the sports center for some ping pong and video hunting.  Toby and Matt saw Avatar and went grocery shopping.  What a day!

Wednesday night, we all went out to the Brickhouse Steak House for Gran’s birthday.  Lucy slept through most of the dinner.  

Thursday, it warmed up and rained, so the snow was on its way out.  The kids did a little bit of sledding in the morning, but most of the day was spent just lounging around.  Matt worked on fixing this blog and getting the older entries re-posted.  Toby made a great dinner that night and we feasted with Gran and GranDon.

Remember the picture of the snow?  Here is the roughly the same picture after the snow melted.

After Thursday’s lazy day, we needed to get out and do something.  By this time, the snow was completely gone.  The Theule’s and GranDon went to Sun Mountain Fun Center for bowling and arcade games.  Gran visited with a friend who lived in Bend, Oregon.  For lunch we all went to Red Robin.  The food and service were very good, but for me the highlight was the vanilla malted milkshake at the end.  Yum!

Saturday we have packed up.  Toby is taking a last minute nap and I am doning final cleanup before we hit the road for Portland.  Tonight at 8p, Max and Matt fly out and will spend Sunday at Poppa and YaYa’s house.  Toby and Lucy will be in Portland until Monday and then they will meet up with Max in Santa Clarita.

Happy New Year!

The weather forecast for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday is for "snow showers".  The Tuesday forecast is for PM ‘snow showers’.  If we were going tubing, it would best be Tuesday.  We chose the Hoodoo Autobahn

We arrived about 10:30a, and suited up.  Lucy and I started off in a double tube.  We hooked up to the tow rope and had a smooth ride up the hill.

After 2 runs in the double tube, Lucy decided she wanted to ride by herself.  I heard her laughing all the way down the 800’ run.  As the day wore on, the line for the tow rope got really long.  We switched to walking up the hill.  We could get 2 runs in the time it took to wait for the tow rope.  When I say that we walked up the hill, I mean Lucy rode like a princess in the tube as Dad huffed and puffed up the hill.  Max was fast up and down, and he probably got 1/3 more runs in total than Lucy and I did.

The PM snow showers began at about 2 pm.  By 3p, it was hard to see the bottom of the run.  Not being an experienced I was concerned about road conditions, so we had our last run at 3:15p.  I was right to leave early.  It was scary for me, although I later heard one local comment that ‘this was nothing’.

We make it up to Oregon about every other year around Christmas.  In the past we have gone tubing and sledding, but this year I wanted Max to learn to ski or snowboard.  I didn’t really care which, but I wanted him to have some professional instruction.

The nearest ski area to Eagle Crest Resort is Hoodoo.   Hoodoo has a Mountain Cubs program for kids under 6 years and a Junior’s program for kids under 12.  We saw on Google Maps that it was only about 25 miles from our resort, so I figured that 45 minutes would cover the travel time.  I also planned for 30 minutes before the classes started to get the kids signed up and fitted for rentals.  With the classes starting at 10a, I wanted to leave at 8:45a.  At 8:30a (when they opened), Toby called, just to make sure the class wasn’t full.  The person she talked to said that we should arrive 1 hour before the class and that the travel time would be closer to an hour.  He didn’t think we would make the morning class, even if we left right away (which we would not be able to do). 

So instead of running around screaming at each other feeling under the gun, we leisurely got ready for the afternoon classes (1p).  Toby had done a great job of borrowing snow clothes for everyone, so there was a lot of preparations to make sure we had everything for both kids.  My plan had been that I would snowboard during the kid’s instruction and Toby wanted to be available for Lucy. 

Our GPS had us taking some crazy small side roads.  Since it had recently snowed, neither Toby nor I wanted to be taking these types of still-iced roads.  So we winged it and just followed the highway signs (per the Google map).  We got there with about an hour and 15 minutes to prep the kids.  Even with all that time, by the end, we didn’t have any extra minutes; the kids were right on time.

In the running back and forth between Mountain Cubs and Juniors, I lost track of Max.  I had placed him in the instruction area, and he and I had talked to an instructor in the area.  I left him under the ‘Snowboarders- beginner’ sign, and when I returned after getting Lucy signed in and suited up, the instruction had spread out to various areas of the mountain.  After about 15 tense minutes, we found Max with the ‘Snowboarders- beginner’ class.  What took so long was that I was telling the Ski School supervisor that he was a first time snowboarder.  He was not with the ‘Snowboarders- first time’ class as I insisted he would be.  He was with the ‘Snowboarder – beginner’ class, having a great time.  When we finally found him, he had a big grin on his face and had made a couple of friends, so we left him in that group.  The instructors didn’t check his tag, and I put him under the wrong sign, so there was confusion all around.  But all is well that ends well.

Max snowboarding from Matt Theule on Vimeo.

Max Snowboarding from Matt Theule on Vimeo.

Max Snowboarding from Matt Theule on Vimeo.

Lucy did all the things that the instructors asked her to do, but she said afterwards that she didn’t like it (except for riding the lift).  When we are back in Oregon in two years, we will try again.

Lucy Ski School from Matt Theule on Vimeo.