I think if I have ever earned a glass of wine, it was Wednesday night. Chad was working out of town, Ella was spending the night and the kids were having a fabulous time. I put the kids in their beds and set the alarm at 10:00pm after a movie and a bowl of cereal. I was sitting in my kitchen doing a little online shopping for Trace's birthday next week, when at about 11:30, my house alarm goes off. To assume I was petrified would be a safe assumption. I grabbed the phone, put all three kids in one bed, then ran to the safe for my pistol, all while calling 911. There was no way in the world I was waiting for the alarm company to call me!

I was talking to the 911 dispatcher, my heart pounding and breathing as if I'd just completed the Boston Marathon, when we were disconnected. I used my cell phone to call my neighbor to ask her to send her husband, Ella's dad, over to check things out. When she answered the phone, all I could do was cry! I managed to get 'alarm' and 'Scott' out where she could understand me and he was on his way. During my call with Brook, I managed to get the 911 dispatcher back on the phone. The dispatcher did tell me that she would not, if she were me, answer the door with a pistol when the deputy came knocking. Sound advice, which I followed.

The deputy came barrelling down the street and joined Scott int he backyard to check things out. When they were satisfied things were a-ok, they came in to talk to me. The deputy asked me for my name, and when I opened my mouth to tell him, I started to cry...again! Those of you who know me, know that I do NOT cry in front of people! So Scott (who probably had to wake up in 4 hours to go to work) was giving my name to the deputy while I cried. I knew I couldn't panic until there was another responsible adult there. Once that deputy gave me the all clear, and I felt satisfied that we were all safe, I quit being the responsible adult everyone says they want to be with in a crisis situation.

It was a regular 3-ring circus here for a little while. I forgot to mention that during the pandemonium, I decided to let Katie out of her kennel because if the guy from the last episode of Criminal Minds was going to come busting in, she damn well better sacrifice her saved-from-the-Wal-Mart-parking-lot-butt and protect me! So when the deputy came in through the patio door, she went to telling him what she thought about a strange man walking in our house...and it wasn't nice. So there I was trying not to cry, him talking to me, and Katie barking like nobody's business.

It was determined that it was just a freak thing. "Sometimes they just go off," the deputy tells me. There were no screens pulled off the windows, tire marks on the street, footprints around the house...so I was really, surprisingly, ok. If there would have been a tiny bit of anything suspicious, we'd have been breaking in that new Marriott in town tonight. But all the windows were still locked and the screens were intact. I think the kids believed that it was just a test that the police sometimes do to make sure everything works right. That's what I told them and that's what the story will forever be. Well, until they read this when they're older.