Over the Weekend....

We spent Thanksgiving weekend downstate at My Mom and Dad's house...the driving both ways was fine fortunately!  Turkey and all the fixings (including the stuffing- my favorite) were great.  The beer selection is always so much broader down there too so we took advantage of some new microbrews as a treat.  Will and my Mother typically do the "black friday" shopping the next day...me?  I sleep!  Someone has to stay with the kids!  So THIS year- the stores opened at midnight.  This means they had to leave at 11:00 to "scope the place out" first.  What?!  The next group of stores they were to visit didn't open until 3:00 and 4:00am so I totally expected Will to come stumbling in.  I woke up at 3:30am to shut off the light that was left on while I was, ahem, reading and still no Will.  The kids were up by 6:30....no Will.  They came home around 8:00!  Will immediately sat down on the couch and fell asleep.  I was having a hard time getting the kids to be quiet (hard when they have been unconscious for 10 hours) so the kids and I went to the Davisburg Candle Factory.  The candle factory has been there for years and years...I remember going there in elementary school and they have a really cool automated system for dipping candles involving rollerskate parts.  We did some Christmas shopping there while waiting for Daddy and Grandma to wake up.  That is all the shopping I did!- oh I did go to the beer store again....that doesn't count though for holiday shopping.

We left Saturday afternoon to go home and were met with a calamity....the cat, Ginger, had knocked over the cage containing Duncan's mice...I had shut the door to their room but evidently it didn't latch..  What mice??  Well, for Duncan's birthday we took him to the pet store to pick out a HAMSTER.  We didn't come home with a hamster, but two very cute mice.  One was such a runt I was sure it was going to die but he really wanted the tee-tiny one.  Long story short- the cage was knocked over, food, shavings and mice turds everywhere!  The small straw ball they sleep in was found in the hallway where Ginger evidently rolled it.  No mice anywhere that we could see, but no scraps of mice lying around either.  I checked the litter box to see if there was any evidence there, nope (I'm a biologist, remember- I do these things for a living).  Saturday night I put out a tiny bit of peanut butter on small saucers in a couple of spots to see if there might be some evidence they were still around.

Sunday morning I opened the closet in the hall where the ball was parked in front of and I heard squeaking!  Someone had been into the peanut butter too.  I "excitedly" gathered up some mouse catching paraphenalia and went into the bedroom to get the mouse cage in case I got lucky.  Whaaaat???  There is a mouse IN the cage!  One of them evidently made her way back home.  I don't even want to know how she got in there because she can probably get back out again.  However, the tiny spotted one is still on the loose in the closet.  I put the small sleeping ball in there in hopes that she would climb in (because she really liked sleeping in that ball) but no luck....I suppose the cat trauma associated with the ball was too much.  I put the mouse in the cage into the closet hoping that would lure her out...still not there this morning though more peanut butter is gone.  I'm not looking forward to ripping that closet apart to look for this tiny mouse...