COPS - Gilbert

I sat in my car in front of Tony and Gigi's house, wishing I had my camera as I watched three cops, guns drawn, bust into their front door yelling "Gilbert PD!" No, this is not a redux of our Christmas party fuzz bust. This was the real deal! Let me back up...

I received a phone call yesterday morning from a neighbor of Tony and Gigi's, saying there were three guys prowling the neighborhood and they think they broke into Tony and Gigi's house. The cops were called. I called Gigi and told her I'd go scope out the sitch and let her know... at this point we still weren't sure which house the guys had gone into.

Now, they live only 1/4 mile away from me. I hopped into my car (kidless, thankfully, they were all at Christy's house yesterday b/c I was working), got down the street and was horrified to see cops crawling ALL OVER THE NEIGHBORHOOD. On foot, in their cars... they even had a hood-copter prowling overhead looking for these guys! I got to T&G's house and the cop who was posted on the street (the perps' car was still parked in front of their house) still didn't know which house had been broken into. A neighbor had seen them jump out of their car and run into a house, but weren't sure which house. Anyway, I called Gigi and told her I still didn't know, but hey, why don't I check the house to see if anyone had been in there? Uh huh. That's me. Using my brain. So I walk up to the front door and it's unlocked. The spare key wasn't where it was supposed to be. So it didn't take much to determine that someone had taken the key and let themselves into the house. I didn't open the door to even peek into the house... But I was told by more than one person that I'm lucky I didn't get a slug in the gut (thanks for your concern Jarad and Tony). I went back to tell the nice police man that I had found their crime scene and he told me to get back into my car in case the bad guys came back. He didn't want me getting in the way basically (or doing his job?). He called for backup, they went in and yes, the house had been torn apart. The good thing is that when the cops came the robbers dropped everything they intended to steal in the middle of the living room and took off out the back door. They hopped back-yard fences and got away on foot. Thus the cops all over the neighborhood when I was driving to Gigi's house.

The guys had gone through every room in their house, grabbed backpacks and started stuffing them full of stuff -- computers, cameras, video cameras, ipods, hard drives, guns, Louis Vuitton bags, JCrew flip flops (ha ha! isn't that funny?). They even stole cash from my 10 year old nephew's wallet in his underwear drawer! And i-dogs from my nieces' rooms. No mercy, these guys. They had it all loaded up and apparently had planned to go back out the front door, get in their car and drive away. But the cops were out front by the time they were done and they had to get out fast, so dropped everything.

Three funny things about this:
1. One of the cops, the one who was chasing the bad guys over back-yard fences, had stepped in dog poo and tracked it all over their carpet. Gigi said she thinks she's more grossed out by that than by being burglarized!

2. Thankfully, the owner of the getaway car is an otherwise law-abiding citizen... his car registration was current and his address up to date. One bad guy down!

3. One of the backpacks that had been loaded up and left behind was ONE OF THEIRS! And it had the guy's timecard in it. Hell-o!! What idiots.

I came home to grab Emma after school and she was pretty shaken up that their school had gone into lockdown. It was a shocker for her to find out it was because her cousins' house had been broken into! And they caught one of the guys a couple of hours later on the sidewalk directly behind my house...

So we're all a little more buttoned down today. Thank Heaven for alert and watchful neighbors who take action when something doesn't feel right!

Austen vs. McMurtry

This may not even be a consideration in most households, for many reasons. But Sunday night posed a bit of an issue in our home. Two favorite authors. Two TV movies. Two channels. Two spouses. I'll let you guess who wanted whom, but the latest installment of Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove characters in Comanche Moon was up against Jane Austen's Persuasion on Masterpiece Theatre. Now, we are an old-school home with no cable/HDTV/satellite/DVR etc. etc. Only three TVs, two of which actually get reception, and one of those is a 13" TV/VCR combo I bought when I lived in New York (that tells you how old it is, and it's still kickin').

Jarad was gracious enough to scoot to the bedroom to enjoy his Comanche Moon on the 13-incher, and I loved loved loved Persuasion in High-Def (we do have a high-def TV, but not the service), although Captain Wentworth was far too handsome for his own good. I can't wait for the rest of the Jane Austen series on Masterpiece Theatre!

I call the big TV on Sunday nights at 9 until April!

Sleep - that evasive luxury

I have had the worst case of insomnia ever for about a week now, and I am going crazy! I had ONE night of uninterrupted luscious sleep for about 6.5 hours, but other than that I've only been able to catch about 90 minutes at a time for about 3 hours each night. With hours on hours of wakefulness in between. Seriously? IT SUCKS! You should see the dark circles under my eyes, and my skin is just pasty. I've finished a couple of books and gotten some writing done, but I'd really rather be sleeping!

Oh well. Just had to vent I guess. Any sleep tips anyone has (no Julie I'm not going to go see Dr. B at the Sleep Center LOL), I'm willing to try! Except warm milk, not a fan of that unless it has chocolate in it, and well, that kind of defeats the purpose!

My poor kids...

So I found the Look-Alike meter on Anne's blog and tried it for our family... My poor poor kids all look more like me than like Jarad (except for Case, who apparently is a perfect mixture of me and Jarad - and I did it on two pictures a year apart, so it MUST be true! :) ).

Here are the results:

Crack Modesty

Emma is very observant. Allow me to articulate. She had a shirt on the other day that has a faux tank top sewn into it. Jarad commented on her shirt and asked her if she was wearing two shirts. She told him that it has a shirt sewn in so that she can be modest. Because when she's a teenager and has, you know, like Mom has (points at her chest), you have to wear a tee shirt underneath so people can't see your crack. Because if you can see your crack that's not modest.

She has a way with words, doesn't she? She just CRACKS me up.

Yet ANOTHER nightmare at church

Was it a full moon yesterday or what? For some reason our twins were ON something (maybe it was Diet Coke -- I'll tell that story later). Case decided about halfway through Sacrament meeting that he'd had enough. He got past Emma (last time Emma gets to sit at the end of the row) and took off to the front. Before Jarad could get to him he had run up onto the stand, behind the organ, behind the piano, to the back of the choir chairs. Screaming all the way. I actually couldn't watch it all because I was ducked down with my face buried in the bench laughing my head off. A few minutes later Tess seized an opportune moment while I was trying to stop Emma and Fisher's current argument to escape as well. Thankfully she ran to the back, so my chase was a bit less conspicuous than Jarad's.

OH NO BUT THAT'S NOT ALL!

I was carrying Case and holding Teslin's hand as we walked to their class. Keep in mind that for two years I've been carrying two babies around. I get one situated on one hip, then pick the other one up under their arm and hoist them onto the other hip. No big deal. Recently Case has gotten too heavy for me to pick up one-handed, so it's usually Tess who gets lifted second. So as we reached their open classroom door, Tess decides to start running... away from the classroom. Before she got away, I grabbed her by the arm and kind of picked her up and swung her into the classroom. Something POPPED. That's happened before, but this time she started screaming. I picked her up and got Case interested in some toys while I checked her out (you know, my expert medical hands). Every time I touched her she cried "ow!" Not good. About 15 minutes went by, and as I sat and held her she would stop crying, then want to get down to play but as soon as she moved in the slightest, she'd start crying again. Not just whimpering, but CRYING in pain.

Someone went to find one of our friends who's a nurse, and after talking to her (thanks for your calming influence Shauna), I was on my way to find Jarad and be on our way to the ER. But the ER came to us instead! Thanks to our ER-doc-friend Joel for coming to the rescue and popping Tess's elbow back in place. Evidently it's a very common thing for moms to wrench their kids' arms out of joint. So common they have a name for it (nursemaid's elbow)! So Joel does a little magic, said he felt the elbow pop back in, and said to give her 10 minutes to see if she started using it again. In LESS than 10, she was asking to "go bubba." She wanted to go back where Case was and play with him. So she was totally fine, but this momma felt like the crappiest mom in the world.

Nice I can laugh about it now, but seriously I haven't heard her cry like that since her LAST visit to the ER. I wonder if Joel could have gotten that hanger dislodged from the bottom of her mouth??

What I did on my Christmas Break...

You would think I've been so uber busy since Christmas that I just haven't had the time to jump on here and post pictures, give reports, etc. Au contraire! I've done nothing but sit on my rump for a week, and I'm just now getting motivated enough to creep back into reality. And so I blog.

We have had such a relaxing and wonderful holiday season. Lots of family visits, good food, laughter and games (thanks G&G Stastny for Holiday Jenga, it's provided much fun!)... we miss those we can't be with in person, but they are in our hearts for sure.

Our Christmas vacation higlights (after getting busted by the police):
Christmas, of course.
Emma's top gift was probably her first camera. She took 100 pics on Christmas day. Then (darn it!!) the batteries died. I just put new batteries in yesterday.



Fisher's fave is a tough call. Probably his walkie-talkies. Could be his army guys. Tomorrow it will probably be something else. That's what we love about Fish.



Teslin and Case probably equally adore the babydoll set up Santa brought for Tess. And the camping gear he brought for Case.





Jarad came through, once again with the perfect gift for me -- this year he bought season tickets (yes, one for him too) to our local community theater. And from me he got his first six-string guitar. He'll be a self-taught prodigy in no time I'm sure (look out Prince!).

Sedona Getaway
G&G Curtis had some use-em-or-lose-em points on their timeshare, so they got us a couple of nights at a condo in Sedona. We feasted on frozen pizza, hot chocolate, cookies (OK cookie dough) and popcorn while the kids enjoyed the xanadu of a High School Musical double feature (I and II) on the Disney channel. And I drew guilty pleasure in my once-a-year purchase of celebrity gossip in the year-end double feature of People magazine. We didn't do much other than NOTHING, but it was fun to do it somewhere other than our house, and we didn't have to clean up afterwards!

Colossal Crossword Puzzle, Rubik's Revolution, Sudoku, etc.
Each year the Republic publishes a crossword puzzle the size of a double-page spread. We have almost finished it this year! Of course, we have spent quality time doing other mindbenders, but the Colossal Crossword has been my personal fave.

OK I think this has gotten long enough. That's why I need to post more often. I hope you all had a Christmas filled with joy, and here's to a prosperous 2008! This morning I was thinking of what 2008 has in store for us, and we have so much to look forward to! Emma will be baptized this year, Jarad and I celebrate 10 years of wedded bliss, mom and dad come home from their mission, the Stastnys are gathering for a reunion, and my parents will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary (which also means my dad will turn 70, old geezer!). Looks like 2008 will be great!

Happy New Year!