Every once in a while the ASP.NET 2.0 page lifecycle doesn’t quite work as I thought and I have to re-research it again.  Here is a link I found that helped me this time.  What was of special note to me this time was that a web user control will not have created its child controls until the page.OnPreRenderComplete event.  Which, makes complete sense to me now.

http://muellerdesigns.net/DasBlog/PermaLink,guid,112425f6-dfa3-46bf-a995-dd28c7dcbb99.aspx