Sadie Wants a German Shepherd

I'm about one coffee cup shy from freaking out once and for all.  The Final Freakout.  The Nervous Breakdown.  The Last Neuron Standing. 

Our house alarm went off at 4:40am Tuesday morning. Sirens blazing, chest pounding, child gathering, soul praying.

But let me back up.

As you know, Andy's job requires significant traveling.  He was scheduled to be away on personal leave most of this week too.  He came home early and unannounced Tuesday afternoon.  I was confused, happy, confused, happy, and so on.  To celebrate both our state of confusion and happiness we took the kids out to eat for dinner.

Abby got a balloon on our way out of the restaurant. Her (pink!) balloon snuck out and into the cold drizzly sky as soon as she was fastened in her car seat. Helium does fancy itself some elbow room.

Abby cried like her best friend just shot into the sky to live among the clouds and raindrops forevermore.  Andy asked me to go back inside and ask for two more balloons.  I returned with one green and one yellow.  The only pink one they had was now airborne to the moon.

Later that night, we giddily did our bedtime routine and got the kids to sleep without promising them trampolines and twenty dollar bills. We all drifted into a sweet comfortable sleep.  Until 4:40 a.m. when the siren in our home and my heart went off.  I was the first one vertical followed by a bleary eyed Andy who had somehow reached for his pants and a firearm at the same time.

I ran down the hall to check if Grayson was maybe sleepwalking and turning doorknobs in his sleep.  He wasn't.  He was still sleeping like an angel in his bed.  Abby was up and asking for cartoons.  Sadie was blinking hard and wondering where her beauty sleep went.  I was somewhere between losing my mind and bionic hearing.

It seemed like light years before the police arrived (it wasn't, it just felt that way).

They walked around to make sure whoever had been trying to get in was long gone.  They saw no sign of forced entry.  I was still shaking in my pjs.  Sadie threw up three times.  Grayson snored.  Abigail was hungry.
We carried on with our morning as much as possible and the kids were none worse for the wear.  I on the other hand?  Seriously needed a margarita.  Andy immediately went down the yellow brick road and assumed it must've been a malfunction of our alarm system.  I am not such an optimist.  The whole time we've been using this system it has not once malfunctioned or even so much as made a blip if it wasn't completely pilot error.  So I find it near impossible to believe it decided to break at 4 in the morning on a clear skied windless night.

I spent the next 6 hours investigating, trying doors and windows, checking batteries, talking to the alarm tech support, recreating the imagined scene with Andy as the bad guy, etc. I nearly drove him back to his tree stand. You can see where my son gets his pervasive need to figure things out.  I cannot let things go when they do not make logical sense.

So, after all that I have to admit two things:  We still don't know whether or not it was an attempted burglary or perhaps a case of something....Christmas tree....the green and yellow balloons?....setting off motion sensors that were inadvertently set that night before going to bed.

The only problem with the motion sensor theory?

The balloons were tucked neatly into Grayson's laundry basket.  All night long.  I found them there at 7am.  And the Christmas tree?  I stared at that sucker for ten minutes straight and it did not even quiver. 

So you see, it's time for a saber toothed German Shepherd to come live at our house.  Sadie needs her beauty sleep.

  (Can you spot her?  Only her ears are visible.  Look closely, you can almost see her royal crown.)