3 Words

Matt called me Monday morning at 6:30 and said three words that I hoped I would never hear, "We've been robbed." I flew out of bed and immediately began grabbing the kids and putting them in the double stroller.  We took the elevator down to the first floor and there was Matt, sitting on a bench, bent over with his face in his hands in the hotel lobby. 

We had traveled with him to Houston for business.  He had planned to get up early and beat all of the traffic in order to see his first customer on the other side of the city.  God had other plans.  Matt grabbed a banana and a bottle of water before heading out to the Tahoe.  He noticed one of our maps on the ground and thought that was strange, but went ahead and got into the car.  When he opened the door, he noticed the console open and everything thrown around the vehicle.  They took everything they could get their hands on.  Both of our Garmins were gone and several other things (including his customer's credit card information).  BUMMER!!  We immediately called our neighbor at home and woke her up!  She went to our house and checked for Matt's wallet. Thankfully, he had accidentally left it at home!  What a relief! (And what a great neighbor!!) We still had a major clean up job and a logistical nightmare to deal with.  What were they after?  We have no idea.  We had almost everything in the hotel room with us (including our car seats- thank the Lord!)Beth was planning to pick me up and take the kids that morning, so I had everything with me.  Matt put everything he needed out of sight- in the console. 

After the police left, we packed everything up and headed to Target to make our replacement purchases.  Matt took me to the Houstons' NEW house in Memorial, and we both jumped on the phone THINKING that we were doing damage control.  I was on the phone with the insurance adjuster and Matt was telling people to cancel their credit cards when ALL of a sudden, I heard Cayden getting a MAJOR spanking!!!  I jumped up to run to his rescue (thinking that Matt was taking his frustration out on Cayden).  Matt just said, "LOOK!"  Immediately I turned from wanting to fuss at Matt for being too harsh to almost spanking Cayden again, myself!  Talk about damage control... Cayden had found a black sharpie and wrote on their white columns in front of their house. (They literally just moved into this house!)  I immediately grabbed him and took him inside.  I looked under their sink and prayed to find a "magic eraser," but I came up empty handed.  I sat him down by their fire place and noticed that their toys had black sharpie on them as well.  Could he have?  Would he have??  "Cayden, did you write on Daniel's new toys with that marker?"  Cayden looked at them and said, "uh hu!"  AAAGGGHHH!!!  Daniel had a birthday party on Saturday, and Cayden had just defaced his brand new property!

Beth was a super trooper about all of the things that happened throughout the day.  She actually did have a magic eraser in her laundry room and you will be glad to know... it actually DOES get permanent sharpie markers out!  It is amazing.  I scrubbed, scrubbed and scrubbed some more.  There is little evidence that Cayden left his mark, literally!  I wanted to take pictures of all of this, but I was WAY too embarrassed.  Beth was still sweet enough to take me to Harwin and let me de-stress while I shopped a little.  We headed back to her house to put the kids to bed and Courtney stopped by for a visit.  It was great seeing her and Hunter.  I wish we could have visited longer.  My camera died, so Beth is going to email pics later. 

An hour or so went by before I heard from Matt.  I was on the phone, so I let it go to voicemail.  Little did I know, he was calling to get her address before his phone died!!  She barely spit out the address before his phone hung up on them.  I called Matt's boss to let him know that Matt's phone was dead and he was laughing hysterically because Matt was on the other line calling his boss (1-800 number) on a pay phone!  Poor Matt!!  It was a rough day.  He was going to stop and buy a phone charger, but realized he didn't have a wallet!  He was calling his boss to get him to call me!  How funny is that?  Again- rough day!

Funny note: Beth commented on Brinley's stained clothes and Cayden's hair smelling like vanilla coffee.  It turns out that throughout the morning's hustle and bustle, I spilled most of my coffee on the kids.  It was in the stroller's cup holder.  It is hard to get the stroller through doors.  I usually bump them a few times before I actually make it through.  One time, Cayden was complaining about his eyes and we looked down and there was coffee dripping off of his eye lids.  Matt and I laughed because we figured it was par for the course.  I had no idea I had actually drenched my kids in my coffee.  Cayden's hair was sticky until he washed it last night before bed, but like Beth said, it smelled really good- like vanilla coffee!  Good thing it had been there for a long time and wasn't hot! Oh What Fun!

We drove back to San Antonio looking like we were getting away in a stolen vehicle.  As we pulled in the garage, the bottom fell out of the sky & it poured rain.  Thank You LORD!

You never know why certain things happen in life.  Who knows- Maybe something horrible would have happened to Matt if he had left at 6:30 as planned.  We'll never know.  It's just stuff, it's just money, it's just material possessions.  We're considering ourselves blessed.