Not-so Mighty Mouse - It's long but well worth the read!!!

Yes real mice were hurt in this story and we make no apologies. (As told by Mike)

We had a very enjoyable camping experience for a week at a Chipman family reunion. We played lots of games (we played pinochle, pinochle, pool, pinochle, pool, baseball, pool, balderdash, ………….and pinochle.) The sleeping wasn’t so bad either as long as you ignore the night the mouse got into our cabin.

We slept in A-frame cabins that seemed quite nice. They were mostly clean except cabin 4 that had bat droppings all over the floor. They kept really cool during the day so it was nice to come in from the hot weather. It also had electric light fixtures as well (this is when you ask where the camping actually comes in…..cabins, lighting, showers, and a pool table?) Overall the cabins were fairly nice and only had a few small holes in them.

One particular night after we had fallen asleep a clever little mouse (let us call him Herbert for fun) happened to find one of these little holes. Herbert I am sure was used to people bringing food into their cabins and was innocently trying to find some of ours. He was sorely disappointed to find nothing as I have learned from previous accidents with raccoons never to keep food in your sleeping areas, but that is a different story.

Herbert was a very unlucky little mouse though. He might have found out we had nothing and just gone his merry way, until he pushed up against a metal baseball bat we had in the cabin and woke us up. Now metal baseball bats I am sure are quite handy at getting rid of mice, but don’t be worried we didn’t kill him, yet. I quickly grabbed the bat and chased after him, but mice are rather quick and like to hide under things. I needed help so I asked Laura to try and help me corner it so we could get back to sleep. Her petrified look told me I was on my own. (Whatever! I simply informed him that he was sadly mistaken in thinking that I was going to get off the raised, protective air mattress to help.)

At this point I think the mouse realized its impending doom if it tarried any longer and so it zoomed right back out of the hole it came in. At first we didn’t notice the hole and tried to go back to sleep thinking it was long gone, but little scratching feet on our floor told us otherwise. Herbert had returned. I grabbed the light and shone it in the general direction, but he had already gone. Laura noticed a small hole next to an electric conduit line that the mouse had run out of. I found a plastic bag and shoved it in the hole and to dissuade any future attempts of home invasion I backed up the bag with the end of a small wooden baseball bat. Herbert still scratched at the bag throughout the night, but could not get in. He did keep us up most of the night with all the noise though.

In the morning we told the camp manager about the mouse, and he set up a mouse trap with peanut butter on it and that was sure to be the end of poor Herbert. With little thought of what may come later, we went about our pool playing, game playing, and so on.

As the night wore on our little ones got tired and so I took Emma up to our cabin so she could go to sleep. She is a very sharp little girl and quickly noticed something in the corner of the cabin. I then had to spend the next 5-10 minutes explaining what a mouse trap was and why we had to kill this poor little mouse so it would not bite and get anybody sick. She seemed to understand and so I was beginning to think that things would be ok.

It was then that she pointed at the mouse trap and asked if it was the mouse. I tried to explain that the contraption was the mouse trap and not the mouse. And in her own words she replied, “then what is that soft fuzzy thing over there!” I quickly looked behind me and sure enough there was Herbert snacking on the peanut butter. Emma then pointed out with a big smile on her face, “Daddy, it is looking right at us!” Which I replied, “yes, it . . . >SNAP<……. And in less than a second the head wasn’t quite so soft and fuzzy anymore.

I looked with fear into my daughter’s eyes as I worried that her witnessing of the gruesome event would cause some mental trauma later in life. She stared back into my eyes and with the excitement and exuberance that only a 4 year old can have she exclaimed, “Daddy. . . THAT WAS AWESOME!” So much for the idea of our sweet little girl……

Stewart Falls

Mike and I decided that before we leave, we want to do some fun things around Utah county and enjoy this beautiful summer we've been having. One thing we want to do is go to our favorite restaurants one last time:

1. Sammy's - by the Marriot in Provo they have these "real pie" shakes where they take pieces of pie, frozen fruit, and little bit of soft serve and mix it into a shake (HEAVEN). Plus their burgers are awesome!
2. Ottavio's - The best Italian food with the best accordion serenader and the absolute best tomato soup ever!
3. Cafe Rio - Need I say more?
4. La Dolce Vita - The greatest down home Italian cooking. It tastes like sitting in an Italian grandma's kitchen and having lunch. Their lunches are really cheap so we always go there for that.

But we also want to enjoy the other pleasures of Utah Valley. Here is our first excursion out:

Stewart Falls (I won't narrate, the picture are pretty self explanatary. But I will say that we were so proud of Emma who did the whole 4 mile hike up and down hills with very little complaining.)

Emma's Birthday

Happy Be-lated birthday to our little Emma. I can't believe that I have a 5 year old! When did she get so old? When did I get so old? It's been a great 5 years and we look forward to many more with our little monkey.

On her actual birthday we had her favorite dinner: hot dogs, cheetos, and watermelon. We also had a cake. (It's pink just for our little pink lover.)

A couple of days later she had her friends birthday. It was a lot of fun and she had a really good time. I made her a special princess barbie cake. (At first she didn't want to invite any boys because she wanted to have a barbie birthday, but we convinced her that it would be more fun to have all of her friends there. ) We were lucky that Barbie's hair didn't catch on fire!


Of course we opened presents and she loved all the fun things her friends got her. The most popular gift was a toy barbie guitar that plays notes and songs. We often find her and Jo sitting in her room making up songs and playing the guitar together. Emma always makes the greatest faces when she is opening presents!

Then the fun really began. Emma wanted a water party so we did water races, water balloons, and a water fight. The party was short and sweet and I hope everyone had a great time.

The Zoo

Good idea: Bringing your umbrella to the Zoo when it might rain.

Bad idea: Leaving your umbrella in the car when it actually does rain.

We went to the zoo last week with Scotty and had such a good time despite the fact that it poured rain on us. We almost got to see everything and had really fun time watching the bird show and also watching the tiger training session. The coolest part of the bird show was the falcon, it was really fast and is a really cool animal. So Danny, if you ever do your Chipmanville and Mike and I are in charge of the school, our mascot is going to be the Falcons. The tiger training session was also cool because the tiger was huge. I swear it was as big as a bear when they had it stand on it's hind legs. Very fun.

I love this picture! Can you believe how big Emma is getting?

Pretty girl!

You can't help but love America and all of our wonderfull freedoms and blessings.

Welcome to Chipman's Corner Jr.

Mike and I are feeling so excited, so nervous, so happy, so grateful, so spoiled . . . (As my niece Sabrina said, "That's a lot of sos.) We are moving to Arizona to take a job at a charter school down there and because the current housing market we are buying a house!! We will be living in a tiny town called Maricopa that is growing and has a lot of potential. We are in the process of buying a home and praying really hard that all the loan stuff goes through because we really love the house. We feel so grateful and spoiled (I know I'm repeating myself) because it is such an awesome house and it is only our first. It's more than twice as big as where we are living and I can't wait to decorate (I'm sure it will be a slow process). It's a corner lot which means we're taking after Mike's mom and dad because they have always lived on a corner and it has a big backyard compared to most of the houses we looked at. It has 4 bedrooms which means there is a guest room and you should come visit. I mean that in all seriousness, we love having guests!
We took these pictures the first time we looked at the house so they aren't the greatest. We don't have any of the rooms up stairs or the loft up stairs but who can blame us, we had already taken pictures of a bunch of other houses. You can consider this your sneak peak and you will have to come visit to see the rest. Here are the pictures.

I know it's not a very green front yard, but remember we're living in Arizona people. ; )

Yeah for a big kitchen! Mike and I love to cook and we also love doing it together. Now there will actually be room for both of us. I always said that someday we would have a house that would fit our kitchen table and now we do!

This is the family room/great room that is shared with the kitchen. We are kind of standing right outside of the kitchen. We didn't get a very good picture of the living room when you first walk in the door so you will just have to come visit us to see it.

The very best part (in my opinion) is the awesome walk in closet in the master bedroom. This is with us standing in the closet, there is still a bunch of shelves and rods behind where we were standing. Look at all the shelves for my shoes!!! I am so excited.