sweet escape: a weekend in carmel

over martin luther king jr. weekend, i was invited to be part of a girls' trip to carmel, a beautiful town on the monterey peninsula. i don't do a lot with these girls, but i was excited to get to know them better and to enjoy a getaway with them.

i have a LOT of pictures of our time together, so i'll just give general captions of the things we did.

we left friday afternoon after school and drove up in two cars. we stayed in a beautiful house with an ocean front view. it included a hot tub, a sauna, a fireplace, and enough beds to sleep 12.

all of the girls that came along were teachers from cvc: amy (1st grade), me, kerin (11th and 12th grade English), melanie (4th grade), darcy (2nd grade), and julie (6th grade). bekah (4th grade) took the picture.

 

the view of the house from the outside (taken the next morning)

 

 the view from the living room

on saturday we went downtown carmel. we spent several hours stopping in shops, getting coffee, and just enjoying the town.

kerin, bekah, amy, and darcy

from there we headed to the beach. the green you see is pebble beach (the famous golf course) 

on sunday morning, i took a walk with melanie to the lobos reserve park. the fog was just burning off and we had a beautiful little hike. 

on sunday afternoon we drove down the pacific coast highway to big sur. on the way we crossed (and took pictures of) the bigsby bridge. 

julie and kerin in big sur

we took a quick hike that led to a beautiful view of a waterfall and the coast.

monday morning we packed up and took a couple last pictures. the first one was intended to show the magnitude of the house. the camera is sitting on the ground level (the garage), we're sitting outside the front door on the second floor. the balcony behind us is the third floor and the windows at the top are the fourth floor.

and another close up to show our beautiful sleepy faces! thanks for a great weekend, friends!

No news is good news

Things have been very quiet on the critter front...a little too quiet. In fact, there have not been any visitors since adding the logs to the pit. Maybe my scent scared them away. I also had some logs that were too big to fit in the pit, so I just laid them in front of the holes that were dug under the deck thinking they would be pushed aside - especially after seeing how determined the last skunk was. But they're still there. At any rate, I've either won or they will come back in full force. Time will tell.

I also thought I should include a color photo of the pit that you've been seeing so you can get an idea of what is actually in the black and white videos:

skunks are excellent diggers

If the last video looked to long and boring to watch, here's the quick and dirty:

In the first 24-hour period of mounting a camera over our crawlspace, there were 2 cats, 1 opossum, and 2 skunks that went through the access hole. Over the next 24 hours, one of the skunks returned a few times and slipped around the board I used to cover the hole.

The next day I got a second board to put in so that I could adequately cover the cole to hopefully dissuade at least the skunks from returning. Apparently there is something very interesting underneath our house, because this is what I caught on camera the next night (the whole video is sped up 2x):

As you can see, that skunk was very determined, and stayed under the house for over 7 hours this time, which makes me afraid he(she?) might be nesting. The other thing this video confirmed is that there are 2 skunks with full tails, not just one. That means there are not 2 but 3 skunks that visit our house (the last skunk in the latest video was the third skunk).

Yesterday I threw in a few logs to prevent the critters from reaching the dirt on the bottom to dig. They had been sitting by the side of our house since we went camping in October, so now they can sit under our deck doing something more useful. Last night was the first critter-free night since Tuesday, so I don't yet know how this new barrier will work. Maybe the skunks are taking some time to formulate a plan...

Welcome to Hotel California

You may recall the opossum and skunk excitement we had last Fall. Unfortunately it isn't over. On two occasions in the last month we woke up to the unmistakable smell of skunk. I got the trusty infrared camera from school again and set it up under our deck to keep an eye on the access hole to our crawl space to get an idea of what we were up against. Here are the highlights from Tuesday morning until Thursday morning. Sorry, still no sound. Maybe put some music on while you watch.

As you can tell, it's quite the busy place. I shortened the sections where the critters were actually under the house. With the exception of the first cat (which I never saw leave but have seen around the premises the last few days) none of them stayed longer than a few minutes.

Feel free to leave suggestions in the comment section of what you think our next actions should be.

merry Christmas! part 2!

for the second half of our Christmas break, we went down to redlands to be with the in't houts. not being in michigan for Christmas, it was really nice getting to be with part of the ippel side.

as is usually the case with our visits, the extent of our activity was gaming, walking, baking, and talking. and as usual, we had a wonderful time together. here are some of the highlights: