Feather River Resort, 2009.

I woke up to the scritch scritch scritch of the tiny toenails of mice, working hard finding whatever it is mice want to find at ten-thirty at night. It sounded like they were in the walls, right behind my head. Back and forth they came, their toes so close I could feel them as they walked, not to fast, not to slow. I woke Joey up and told them I was listening to mice in the walls and he rolled over and went back to sleep.
I couldn't sleep, so I laid there with the sheet up to my chin, expecting at any moment the ceiling to drop with the whole colony of nasty critters sitting on our legs.
I could not sleep listening to them work, so I just laid there, tense and scared, waiting to find one crawling up my bedspread.
Then, around midnight, I noticed a fluttering shadow like a fat butterfly, only louder, flying from one corner of our room to the other. I could feel the wind swish past my cheeks on each swoop. The sound of its wings was like vibrating rubber. That's how I knew it was not just a humongous moth, magnified and blurry because I had my contacts out.
This cannot be happening is all I kept saying to myself. I held it together pretty well until I noticed my fingers were cramping from holding the sheet so tightly. I wanted to jump up on the bed and scream and shake all these disgusting, critterly feelings from skin. I wanted to jump in a nice, clean, pool.
Instead, I woke Joey up again.
Joey! There's a bat in here! I expected him to wake up and tell me that it wasn't a bat. Just the biggest butterfly you have ever seen, or heard. But he didn't. He was quiet, and then he said, "How'd they get in here?"
They?
They??????????
They only thing I was wrong about was there was not one bat. There were two.

After crawling on the floor army-crawl-style to the bathroom to turn on the light, making the bats go even more nuts, running into the walls like we locked them in our bedroom on purpose, Joey crawled back to bed and told me there was no other option but to go back to sleep.
No other options? I think this is when I laughed. A delirious, out of body, crazy laugh.
And then, I curled up under my sheet and shut my eyes and fell asleep to the sound of the bats rubbery, furry little wings and the mice's too-long toenails scratching the wall behind my head.
I still, to this day, cannot believe I did this, and believe deep, deep within my soul I should receive a very special award or pin.
We had the maintenance men ( I overheard them making fun of us on their walkie talkies-what is this? Some kind of resort joke? Are the bats their pet bats?) fill in the holes in the rafters and bring in more mouse traps (we caught three hard working little friends).
The mice, at least in the walls, and the bats, never came back.
The rest of the vacation was spent at the pool, or lakes nearby. The boys played golf two times a day, something that put Joey in the best mood he's been in since I can't remember when. Liana cooed and smiled and giggled in her sleep.
Ethan and Andrew loved being together, but they fought like monkeys. My dad at one point wondered out loud if over this year while Andrew is here if it is better to hang out with them them together or separately. I told him that depends on if he wants to spend his time with his grandsons breaking up boxing matches (with both) or playing peacefully at the park (with one at a time).

The annual family pic, minus Liana (sleeping) and Andrew (sleeping).