The Day My Intuition Was Right

Friday after I picked Carter up from daycare and was driving home I talked to both my mom and my brother, Thomas.  They were on their way to our house for a race we were running Saturday evening.  The closer I got to home, the more excited I got.  I knew I would have at least an hour of uninterrupted one-on-one time with Carter and then family would begin trickling in. 

As I pulled into the driveway I looked up and noticed the curtains in our guest room were open.  I felt my heart drop and got the heebie jeebies.  Since we hung the curtains they have never to my knowledge been opened.  I texted Ty and asked him if he opened the curtains in the guest room.  As I sat waiting for Ty's response, I got more and more creeped out.  I was worried I was going to see someone look out the window at me.  I had this sinking feeling that someone who shouldn't have been in our house had in fact been in it.  Ty quickly responded that he hadn't opened the curtains.  I told him they were open and I was creeped out and didn't want to go inside.  Then I began to worry about Harper.  I really didn't want to go in but thought maybe I was over-reacting.

My worry for Harper trumped the uneasiness I felt.  Just in case, I left Carter in the car with the door open for air and went up to the house by myself.  I slowly walked up to the front door and called for Harper through the door.  Normally she would excitedly bark back at me, but I heard nothing.  I called a few more times and eventually heard the jingle of her collar behind the door.  I "unlocked" and opened the door.  At this point my stomach was in knots and I was worried about Harper so I didn't notice whether the front door was actually locked or not.  I looked into our front room and saw the door to our laundry room and the door from our laundry room to our garage were both open.  At that point I knew someone had been in our house but was in denial that we had been robbed.  I grabbed Harper by the collar and walked her to my car.  That's when I noticed one of my shirts and one of my shoes were laying in our driveway.

I called my brother, Jeremy, who lives less than a mile away from us hoping I could go sit with him at his house, but he was at work.  He mentioned that on his way to work he drove by our house and saw a silver minivan and a silver Honda that looked just like mine out front.  He thought it was strange, but figured I was home and someone had stopped by to visit.  Ty was on his way home so I drove around until he made it home.  When I got back to the house Ty was waiting outside and the police showed up moments later.  I was impressed that the police walked up to the house with their guns raised and did the entire walk-through with their guns out.

Once the police confirmed no one was in the house, we went inside.  The first thing I noticed was that our TV was gone which was expected.  I then noticed that a laundry basket full of Carter's clothes was also gone.  I had done a couple loads of Carter's clothes and hadn't folded them yet.  They were in a laundry basket in the living room.  The robbers must have grabbed the entire basket of clothes.  Both of our computers and both of our cameras were also taken. 

Our back window into our kitchen was broken and there was glass all over the floor.  The robber had cut himself and left a trail of blood through our house: on the walls, light switches, door handles, on the floors.  There was even a towel covered in blood on our bedroom floor.

The police said it looked like they were searching for guns, thank goodness we don't have one or it would be in the hands of criminals right now.

My parents arrived shortly after the police left.  That's when I walked through the house to assess the damage.  My mom walked with me.  In our guest room they had pulled suitcases down from the closet and filled them to take.  For whatever reason they got spooked and left them.  Thank goodness because one of the suitcases was filled with my clothes.  When we saw that, Ty joked that his clothes must really suck because they only stole Carter and my clothes which made all of us laugh.  The other suitcase had a random assortment of items: shampoo, partially used makeup, bathroom cleaner, some of Ty's undershirts, running tops, and all the stuff from our bedside tables.  The strangest thing I've noticed they took was my phone charger which was interesting because they took our computer but didn't take the charger for it.

Our bedroom was a complete mess and even had blood on the wall.  When I walked into the closet I realized they had taken my entire shoe rack.  I checked the back of the door for my other shoe rack filled with high heels and they were all still there.  I told my mom, great so I do have some appropriate shoes to wear to work and she couldn't stop laughing.

Some of the shoes fell out of the shoe rack as they took it.  These are the shoes I have left.

I was relieved when I checked in my dresser and saw none of the jewelry I inherited from my grandma was gone.  Then I realized I had put her pearl necklace in a different "safer" place.  My heart dropped when I realized it was gone.  Our passports were also taken. 

To me it was all just stuff.  None of it was irreplaceable except for my grandma's necklace which I hadn't even gotten to wear yet and all of the pictures saved on our computer.  We searched and couldn't find our external hard drive which broke my heart because that meant we had lost all of our pictures of Carter and I hadn't uploaded any pictures to facebook in months.

As I gave Carter a bath last night and I looked down into his face I was so thankful.  Everything we lost was just stuff.  Nothing priceless and only one irreplaceable item.  None of that stuff matters.  I still have the only priceless pieces in my life, my family.  Harper and Skippy are also both safe and accounted for.  Everything changed the moment Carter came into my life.  His safety and well being means more to me than anything in the world.  As long as he's safe nothing else matters.  All the items we lost are just that, items.  My Carter boy, as long as he's happy and healthy, I can make it through anything.

The icing on the cake came this morning as we were finishing our clean up.  Ty found our external hard drive.  That means we didn't lose all of our pictures.  I've been pretty diligent about backing up our pictures since Carter was born.  I hadn't done it in about a month, so we only lost a months worth of pictures.  It was an amazing feeling to see that hard drive in Ty's hands!

My brother brought his computer with him which he let me borrow to type this post.  You probably won't hear from me for a while since I won't have access to a computer starting Monday.