Oh wait there's more...

The third reason of why we are glad we are in Idaho, is our tractor. Ken couldn't wait to drive this thing. What can I say-it's a guy thing. The children saw daddy just driving around and they wanted a ride too. Keegan and Cameron, my sister's boys, are the ones on top. Cora and Alexa are the ones on the bottom. The next day Ken actually cut the grass but realized that if you have an 80 pound child on one side the lawn mower cuts at one level. Then when you place a child that is 40 pounds on one side you cut the grass at a different level.. Needless to say our grass looks very interesting.

Oh wait there's more.... We had been told by our renters that there were mice but they were taking care of it by using mouse traps and a cat. So when we were a little settled I went out and bought mouse traps, my parents got this mouse plug-in thing that made a sound to keep mice away, and we placed them throughout the house thinking we were well taken care of. Well, we were not. One night, I am sitting with Kenzie and Ken is on the computer at the kitchen. He gets up, goes downstairs, and comes back with a guilty expression on his face and something he is trying to hide in his hand. I ask him what he has in his hand and he replies nothing. I keep asking him and finally he says a mouse trap. I, of course, think he has a dead one but he reports no. BUT, he explains that he just saw one come out of our heater vent in the kitchen, crawl around, and head back in. So, he placed the trap in front of the vent and we went on with our night not too worried. At 4 am Kenzie is ready to eat and as I am sitting there looking out of her room a mouse goes creeping by her door through the hall and into the linen closet. The ONLY reason I didn't loose it right there was I had Kenzie and the other girls were sleeping. So I quietly shouted to Ken who woke up like the house was on fire, which to me it was a good toss up. He gets down on the ground and I get a trash can and hand it to him. He then precedes to miss it and it then skitters into Kenzie's room. He tries to catch it there and it escapes and begins to go back downstairs. I am now almost hysterical and yelling you better catch that thing. Ken leaps down the stairs and catches it under the trash can on the last step. We then look at each other like, what do we do next. Ken reached over and gets a paper that he plans to slide under the trash can. As he is trying to do this without letting the mouse out he looks at me and tells me to go upstairs. Stupid me, asks why. He then tells me he thinks he squished it. Of course, I then tell him he better clean up the stair and get rid of all the guts. A little while later I hear him shaking the mouse back and forth in the trash can, as he put it scrambling its brains. What a guy! Anyway, he comes upstairs empty handed and quite proud when I ask him what he did with it. He promptly points to the window and says I chucked it. So now I have this dead mouse somewhere in my backyard, huge sigh. I asked him that IF this happens again, which I hope never again, to please throw it in the trash outside. Well to help us with our mouse problem, the very next day the girls start screaming outside. We all rush to see which one is dying and they scream SNAKE!! Yep- we have a garden snake that I hope is helping catch these lovely mice. Anything to kill these suckers. As you can tell I am loving living in the country. What was I thinking :).