The bad news: Tonight our house got broken into.
The good news: We are the ones who broke into our house.

Today was Jon’s grandma’s 90th birthday (happy birthday, Great-Grandma Doreen!) and we were having a family get-together at her house in Burien. Since the boys become little cranky-pants when they don’t get good naps in, I decided to stay home with them until after nap time while Jon went down to the birthday party early to visit.

I ended up waking David up at about 4:45 because he was still sleeping and we needed to be down to Grandma’s house for dinner. I did my usual routine: made sure diapers were changed and everyone was wearing clothes that were void of all bodily fluid stains. I got everyone’s coats and shoes on, put Jacob in his car seat, took David out to the car and buckled him into his car seat, transferred Jacob’s car seat to the car… and then realized I’d forgotten my keys on the kitchen table.

Usually this would not be a big deal. You just walk back in the door that you had–seconds before–entered and exited no less than 5 times trying to load the car. But, on this special occasion, our door handle decided to break. Into a million pieces, I assume, because there was no way it was ever going to open a door again. I jiggled it, twisted it, banged it, pulled it, pushed it, whispered sweet nothings to it. But nothing. It would not budge.

Now, if we were like any other reasonable home owners we would have a spare key that I could use to unlock our front door. But, chance would have it that we had lent our only spare key to a house-guest who has now carried said key with him back to South Africa.

It was dark and cold and I had no way to drive away or get into our house, so I called Jon in a bit of a panic. He told me to go next door to wait with our neighbors while he drove back home to rescue us.

I’m so grateful to our sweet neighbors, Fances and Antonette. They not only let me stay in their house while we were waiting for Jon, but they went ahead and made us platters of snacks and brought out toys to entertain David. Frances even went over to our house and tried to figure out the door situation for me (to no avail). We are so thankful to have them next door!

Jon drove home in rush-hour traffic and, of course, couldn’t get the door to open. In the end he was able to pull a ladder around to the back of our house where (thankfully) we had left our kitchen window unlocked. He was able to just pull out the screen and slide the window open. It’s a good thing we had that window open, because our next course of action was going to be a rock through the sliding glass door. Once inside, Jon was able to remove the broken handle and replace it with an old one we had in the garage.

I learned a few lessons through this ordeal. When leaving the house (or car–I can totally see David locking me out of my car some day), always keep my keys with me. Keep spare keys in multiple spots. Make friends with your neighbors–you never know when you may need them to rescue you!

Keeping with my New Year’s “resolution” of finding the praise in every situation, I have a lot to be thankful for with this whole thing. I am so grateful that I had BOTH boys with me when the door decided to break. If the door had broken on my previous trip into the house, Jacob would have been locked inside all alone. I’m also grateful that our neighbors were home and let us stay with them–it’s literally freezing outside and it took Jon over an hour to get home. And, for anyone who knows me, you know how important this is: they saved us some cake at Great-Grandma Doreen’s birthday party. Thank you, Jesus, for watching out for us!

Here’s to hoping we have a less-eventful day tomorrow making spare keys at the hardware store 🙂