How to get rid of mice?

I'm realizing that a lot of stuff happened on Owen's birthday. That night, when we got home from the play, our babysitter informed us that she had just seen a mouse run under our dishwasher. Fabulous!! So we set out traps and caught our mouse at about 3:30 that night. Great! Problem solved, right? Wrong!! A few days later, I noticed that one of the traps had a mouse in it. So, I got to clean it out. NOT my idea of fun.

We didn't see a mouse again until the morning we left for Las Vegas. I came out from getting ready and Jo told me to be quiet because there was a mouse in our kitchen. My kids get so excited when they see a mouse. I know, they're crazy. So, we made sure all of the traps were set and went on vacation expecting to see a dead mouse when we got home. However, when we got home, there wasn't a dead mouse. In fact, not only wasn't there a dead mouse, but one of our traps was missing. So, for the next four days, I was paranoid that any cupboard or drawer I opened, I would find a mouse hooked to a trap. The Tuesday after we got home, I had been moving stuff around in our living room and looked over under our bench. There was the mouse hooked to the trap. I had looked there a number of times. I think it had just moved and died there that day. I was watching a friend's kids and was afraid that they would be curious about the mouse, so, once again, I got to empty the trap.

Then this last week, I saw that the trap under our cupboard was sprung. We hadn't seen any evidence of mice, so I just thought that someone had kicked it and it had sprung. Not so. There was a mouse. Once again, out to the garbage can. Jo and Owen think it's so fun by this point to open the door for me to go outside. Then they let Nathan know that they "helped" me get rid of the mouse.

Monday night, we were sitting in FHE and I saw ANOTHER mouse run across my kitchen floor!! Hello!!! Do you think we live in the country or something? So, Nathan's motto is "if what you're doing's not working, do something different." So, we opt for that.

The easy thing here would be to get a cat. There are a few problems with that. Josie has wanted a cat for a LONG time. I think she's wanted one since she could form the word CAT. I really don't want a cat, so whenever she asked for a cat, we would tell her something like, "We'll get a cat the day after NEVER!" I know, we're the nicest parents you've ever seen. Then, after my sister had twins, Jo decided that she wanted twins, too. We told her that we'd have twins the day after we got a cat. So, you see, we couldn't really get a cat. Well, after finding five mice in our house, I decided that a cat was better than a horde of mice. Meet the newest member of the clan:

We've named him Hannibal after the leader of the A-Team (something Nathan has hooked the kids on lately) because he was a good tracker. We already went through Killer, B. A. Baracus, Murdoch (see, the A-Team ties), Tiger, Prince (I vetoed that one saying I didn't want our mouser to be named Prince), and Choose the Right (Chewy for short - thanks to Owen). The funny thing is, when we told Jo we were getting a cat, she told us all the reasons why we didn't want one. Sounds like, for now, she listens to us. We really had her convinced. The cat is from a friends uncle and aunt (the one whose kids I was watching when I found the mouse - apparently she wants to make sure her kids are safe here. Just kidding). They say he's great with people, but is still a good mouser and an outside cat. Sounds like it will be a good fit with our family. Hopefully it will. For now it's shut up in the garage until it learns that we are it's family.