Spring has not Sprung!

Look what we woke up to this morning!!

The Invasion

Cali scolded me on the phone last night for not updating the family blog in a while.

Well, that's what happens when you get INVADED. My laptop - where I do my blogging from and have all the programs I need was INVADED - by a Trojan Virus.

Tessa and a couple of her friends were playing around on YouTube one night and managed to click over to some site where the virus was allowed in! Despite my security programs which have now been upgraded even more!!

Thanks to Lee - my personal computer guy for taking such good care of me and getting up and running again!!

The Trojan Virus was not not the only INVASION we had this past week though.

One morning I was standing at the kitchen window and looked out to see a big, fat raccoon walking across our patio. I watched him/her as he took a left hand turn right into our fenced in vegetable garden. He knew where he was going!

Jim went out and looked around and sure enough there was an open vent right by the air conditioner where a raccoon could climb under the house and take up residence.

Not knowing whether the raccoon was under the house or not we didn't want to board up the hole and end up with a DEAD raccoon under the house! Jim stuffed a towel into the hole figuring the raccoon would be able to push it out if he was still under there.

The next morning the towel had been pushed out so we figured we had an uninvited house guest!

We borrowed a trap from the neighbors to try and catch the thing.

We learned that raccoons like peanut butter sandwiches.

As well as nuts and oranges.

Jim baited and set the trap.

Despite numerous efforts and two different traps we were unable to catch the thing. It could get the food out of the trap but not get caught!

Then on Saturday Jim was sitting in his office and I heard him yell out "There it is!" It was once again strolling across the patio. Jim ran out and stuffed the hole with a big log.

So we are hoping it is out and it has no friends under there waiting for it!!

Jim is getting up his nerve to crawl under the house this next weekend to see what kind of damage has been done. Our neighbors had one last year and had to put a claim against their homeowners to have all the damage to their duct system and insulation fixed!!

Here's hoping for an invasion free week!

The Sheltered Life of an Oregon Grown Girl

One of the perks of living in Oregon is that it is against the law to pump our own gas! Truly it is.

I love it - don't have to get out of my car in the cold or rain, don't have to get dirty, smelly hands etc.

But one thing I did not think about was that I was sending my sweet daughter off to uncivilized Utah where you have to pump your own gas without giving her any instruction on the process.

This weekend, her best buddy, Hannah flew to Utah to spend the weekend. It worked out that Logan was going to be out of town on 10 day tour with the Young Ambassadors so Cali had a car at her disposal all weekend - not sure that is a good thing but Cali was excited!

Of course, no surprise, Logan left her the car with NO gas!! So before she could leave to pick up Hannah she needed to get gas in the car. She called me exclaiming "But I've never pumped gas before!!!"

I told her to grab one of her floormates and take them with her to the gas station - surely they knew how to pump gas and if nothing else just to smile really pretty and maybe the gas station attendant would help her!

Well here are some photos of Cali's first "Gas Pumping Experience" Not sure who thought to take the pictures but I love them for it!! Thanks. I grabbed them off of Cali's Facebook page!