T'was Eight Days Before Christmas

In honor of our recent experience and the Christmas season, I re-wrote a favorite poem.
Enjoy!

T'was eight days before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, except for a mouse.
The stockings were hung in the hallway with care,
In hopes that the mouse would not find the candy there.


The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of presents danced in their heads.
And mama with her computer sat working in bed,
With dad right beside her snoring out of his head.


When out of the bathroom ran the little gray mouse,
Mama sprang from the bed waking up the whole house.
Away to the mousetraps she flew like a flash,
Tore open the cabinets and set one behind the trash.


She woke up the dad with a frightful, wild scream,
He looked under the bed with his flashlight's bright beam.
The mouse had went hiding and couldn't be found.
Sleep finally came, but not very sound.


Each day went by slowly, waiting for mouse to be caught.
But all five traps stayed empty, with more to be bought.
At last four days later, at the end of the day,
The trap made its snap, and the mouse, dead it lay.


The daughter sprang to the trap just to see,
"We got it! We got it!" she shouted with glee.
The house could sleep soundly that night without fear,
The mouse was now gone, no more to appear.


The last four nights til Christmas would be joyful and bright!
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Uninvited Guests

Have you ever had one of those moments that you know you saw something but you can't be sure and you really don't want to have seen anything, so you try to talk yourself out of having seen it in the first place? Yes, I had one of those moments the other night. I was sitting in bed, well past 1am, working on my computer, because I couldn't sleep, having had caffeine well past the time I should have. As I reached up to scratch my head, I thought I saw something brown go across the floor. I immediately jumped up and looked under the chair and shook it. I don't know exactly what I would have done if something came toward me, but I didn't think of that until later. Anyway, I didn't see anything, so I hopped back in bed and proceeded to talk myself out of what I had seen. I tried to make it a figment of my imagination. About 5-10 minutes later, I heard a sound and saw out of the corner of my eye, something in my bathroom. I slowly turned my head and as if in slow motion, watched a little mouse walk along the wall of my bathroom to the shower. It walked in front of the door, paused, looked around and ran directly under my bed. I immediately shook Scott awake, yelling that there was a mouse in our bedroom. At this point we didn't know which way he had gone and I was a little stressed about going to bed not knowing where he was hiding out. I continually asked Scott over and over, "How did he get upstairs?" in a very high-pitched voice. I just couldn't understand why it would come to where there was no food source, especially my bedroom!! We set the one trap we had in the house and placed it where we had seen him last, the bathroom, and then headed back to bed. Do you know how hard it is to sleep when you know there is a live rodent somewhere, not just in your house, but in your bedroom? I was a little excited about that, and my heart was beating a little more rapidly than normal. I only fell asleep after  Scott prayed for God to give me rest and kill the mouse.
Of course the next day, we went out and bought more mouse traps, setting all five and placing them all over the house, upstairs and down. We went out of town that day, praying that we would find the mouse caught when we returned home. The first thing we did when we came home was check every trap, but alas, to our dismay, nothing! We set them in new places and went to bed. The next day we found 3 of the 5 with nothing on them, but not tripped. Great! We have a super-intelligent mouse! Yesterday, we found a spot that Micah was sure was the spot where it was coming in, so we placed the trap there with fresh peanut butter smeared under the trigger to make it harder for this little genius. As we sat watching TV last night, we heard the snap and Moriah came running in the room yelling, "We got it! We got it!"
The entire family had to go check the trap and we cheered over a dead mouse. What a great family moment! Needless to say, we will have traps set for a while to make sure we have no more uninvited guests in our home!

First Official Post

Okay, deep breath, now to write my first post for our new blog. I can't tell you how exciting it is for us to be able to communicate with our friends and family this way. To share our story of God's leading us to be missionaries in Venezuela is going to be fun, but to have you follow us in our continuing journey is even more amazing than I could have imagined. Thank you for joining us in this journey. We appreciate all your prayers and look forward to hearing from you in comments or emails. So, first post, done and I am ready for bed. This will continue to be a work in progress as we add pages about our story and about our kids. Thank you for being patient as we get all the details worked out!