The Break In...

June is a notoriously crazy-busy month for us. It was already a busy month when it was my parents anniversary, my sister's birthday (the following day) and almost always a graduation or wedding thrown in there. Then, we decided to get married in June; the end of June, but still June. So, last weekend was the start of such craziness with a birthday party (for my little cousin Aly, who turned five) on Saturday and a graduation party (another cousin of mine...I have a LOT of cousins) on Sunday. And, if that weren't enough, the following week was almost completely filled with events and obligations and so on.

I know, I know...the title of this post says, The Break In, and you're wondering what all this other crap has to do with that. Well, jeez, give me a minute, and I'll get to that.

So, Thursday was another busy day for us as we has a wedding reception we were going to that evening. Being as it was on a weekday, it meant I had to got to get the kids (and myself) ready by myself. Of course, I had to have appropriate attire for them, as this was a formal-type event, but as all Moms know, you can't actually put the 'nice' clothes on them until just before said event. So, I gathered up the fancy shoes, tights, dresses, sweaters (you have to have extras of everything in the event they do something to the nice clothes in the two minutes after you put them on them, before they are ready to be 'presented.') and stuffed them in the 'party' bag. I then realized the gift bag I had out to put the gift in was just this much too small, and I immediately did a clock check to see if there was time to stuff the kids in the car, get them lunch from somewhere, get over to Target and wrangle them for the 10 minutes35 minutes I would need to grab a gift bag. I began the process of asking them to get ready to go... You know the process; it goes something like this (keep in mind, kids here is more Z than A, but she does add to a lot of the whining, so it feels like both of them):

Me: Hey guys, can you please get ready to go?

Kids: Whyyyyy?

Me: Because we have to go to Target to pick up some things.

Kids: Target? Oooh, can I get an icee (pretty much just Z here)?? Can I get popcorn??? Can I get a new Superman movie?????

Me: No. Now, c'mon. We really have to go. Get your shoes and coats.

Kids: Pleasssssssse can I have popcorn?

Me: No, we'll get some lunch somewhere before.

Kids: Can we get hotdogs at Target?

Me: Maybe (actually thinking this sounded like a pretty good idea, knocking it all out at once)...

Kids: And, after the hotdog, can I have popcorn and an icee?

Me: No! Come one now, we really have to go!

Kids: Aaaaah, man...not fair!

And, now the pouting and general strike-type behavior against putting on shoes and coats has commenced.

Me: Checking the clock again and realizing 20 minutes have gone by...

Guys, we really have to go so we can get lunch, get the wedding stuff and pick Daddy up in time!

Kids: I wanna iceeeee...I wanna iceeeee...

Pocorn! Pocorn (Avalee now)!!!!!!

Me: If you guys don't get over here, put your shoes and coats on now, I'm leaving you here!!

(Moms, I know I can't be the only one who has sworn pre-parenthood to never use that line, and now pull it out of the bag often)

So, the kids have now, reluctantly, gotten ready and I decide to run out to the car to deposit all the bags of stuff that accompany us. Of course, they ran out after me, so I directed Z to get in the car while I scooped up Avalee to put her in her carseat. I noticed her binkie was sitting right in the middle of the carseat, which I found odd because I was sure I had lost it the day before. And, I knew it was not in the carseat, because I checked that thoroughly the day before. I chalked it up to Colin finding it somewhere, somehow and putting it there. Then, after getting in myself, I noticed the faceplate to the car stereo wasn't there. I found that even more odd, since Colin hardly ever removes it. As I dialed Colin at work, I started noticing things around the car that normally are in different places and a bad feeling started to come over me.

When Colin answered, I blurted out, “Did you remove the faceplate on the car stereo?” “Nooo” he said and I could hear it in his voice too. “Then...then...I think the car was broken into.” Colin asked if the DVD player was gone (we bought one of those portable types for the kids last year) and, of course, it was. We started trying to figure out what else might be missing, but of course, the kids were now getting antsy. For the last 20 minutes, I had been cajoling them into the car and they didn't understand why we were just.sitting.there. So, now I had to ask, beg, plead and threaten some more to get them back out of the car and back into the house, so I could call the police. I finally gave up, and let them play in the driveway in the drizzling rain while I called the police, and tried taking inventory of everything missing. The poor kids were now really hungry (well, so was I!), so I shoveled them back inside for some quick PB&J with grapes. In the meantime I was juggling calls with the police department, Colin and my mom. All the stress from the whole week, and now this was quickly building, so Colin made the decision to come home. Once he got back, we started discovering more things missing; all of his CDs, the pennies from the console (way to go thieves...you must have scored a whole $3 there), his cycling gloves (really nice gloves), his wallet, and our checkbook. Crap. So, after he called and canceled his credit card, we called the bank and were advised to close out our checking account and reopen another one. By this time, it's just two hours until we have to leave for the reception, and we still didn't have a gift bag. So, we made the executive decision to put off the bank until the next day, and make a quick Target run.

So, we got the gift bag (and a slightly stale pretzel to hold me over until dinner at the reception) and despite the events of the day, had a nice time at the wedding reception.

We haven't heard anything from the police, and honestly don't expect to. Our insurance deductible is $500, so unless the things that were taken (plus a few things on the car that were damaged) can surpass that, we'll just have to replace everything on our own.

I am grateful that it wasn't as bad as it could have been; the kids DVDs were left along with Colin's bike trunk (which is about $80...haha thieves!) and my Moby, there wasn't significant damage to the car and they didn't use the garage door opener to get into the garage, or worse into the house. I'm still ticked WAY off and just generally disappointed in the human race. And, I can't get over the shock that this happened in our neighborhood, which is just an awesome (newer...less than 10 years old) neighborhood, near the elementary school and filled with families like us. I know it can happen anywhere to anyone, but it happened to us, and it's hard to get past that.

So, if the dirty, rotten scummy thieves just happen to be reading this (hey, you never know); you made my four year old cry, made me question my faith in humanity and...you took my stuff!

Oh, but thanks for finding my kids binkie and putting it back in her carseat; maybe you do have a heart.