Hitchhiker and Anatomically Incorrect

This is two posts in one because my oatmeal is getting cold and I wanted to post before I forgot details.

First off, I noticed quite a bit of paper shreds in our van today as I climbed in to take Daniel to the TMJ specialist. (It went well and Daniel is hoping the pain will subside soon.) Things only get shredded in that fashion by one creature. The droppings confirmed it...there is a mouse somewhere in our van!

Eww! But I didn't have time to search, so it got a ride to and from the Dr's. Each way is 30 minutes on the freeway. And I know it went to the church with me last night. I don't know how long it's been in there. We drove 30+ minutes the other way for groceries yesterday morning. It was probably in there then, too.

Now, the van is sitting in the driveway with both side doors open. The kids are cleaning out garbage. We'll have to remove car seats and floor mats and get the vacuum out there (then change the vacuum bag)!

UPDATE: The van has been cleaned out. The garbage (bags of it - the kids kept kicking it under the seats) is out, the car seats have been removed and the entire van vacuumed. Leah is now vacuuming the last floor mats. Reuseable shopping bags, towels that are supposed to be under the car seats (but rarely are), a blanket and a hoodie are now in the washer.

That mouse had been there a while. There were little dropping and paper shreds throughout the van...including the glove box. Is nothing sacred? I even vacuumed little black poops out of the tracks for the sliding doors.

I vacuumed out Joseph's car seat and checked everyone else's. The van is as clean as I could get it without shampooing the carpet or washing hard surfaces (I can't do everything; I'm only one woman!). I even checked under the hood, but saw nothing suspect there. That would mean more if I was qualified to examine that type of thing.

Now, we're not neat freaks, but we're not that bad! I've never seen such a thing...and I've seen a lot. I never saw the actual offender, so I don't even know if it's gone. We'll have to put a 5 gal. bucket in there tonight with a little yummy in the bottom. We've learned that mice can't get out of buckets. The thought of the kids eating the banana chips after they got dumped on the floor of the van yesterday just makes me shudder. No wonder we're fighting nasty germs! We're probably all suffering from Hantavirus!

Second post: The kids were cracking and eating peanuts in the kitchen while I made my lunch. Nathan was having a hard time getting one cracked open, so he decided to sit on it. My first knowledge of this was upon hearing Daniel say, "Nathan's sitting on his peanut!" My mind skipped ahead of Daniel a little and I SO thought he was going to say something else!