After I got Lash in the Tahoe and gave him instructions to get into his car seat and I got Henley strapped in (there is no car seat base in the Tahoe so I have to use the seat belt to secure her car seat) I headed back inside to finish loading our things. When I got to the door it was LOCKED! I could not believe it! Lash had turned the lock on the doorknob and locked us out of the house. At that moment I was very glad that I hadn't left Henley in the house while I loaded Lash and the diaper bag because that would have made things much worse!
I felt completely helpless...I had no phone and no keys! I'd been meaning to get a spare key made and hidden, but that task was still on the to do list. I decided I would go to the neighbor's house and use their phone to call Clint. I left the kids in the Tahoe that was still parked in the garage and I started walking. I realized half way up the driveway that I should have changed shoes (side note: I was wearing a business suit and nice black dress shoes) but at that point I was not going to turn around. I walked to our neighbor's house, which happened to be over a 1/2 mile away (on a gravel road) and prayed that someone would be home. Nope..I even tried the doors thinking I could go in and use the phone and apologize later for intruding.
On my walk/jog back to the house I was praying for wisdom and help. I was hopeful that I would meet a car on the gravel road and borrow a cell phone. Well, I made it almost back home when I heard a car coming so I ran back up the driveway waving my arms, but I got there 5 seconds too late and the driver did not see me.
When I got back to the house the kids were both fine and no one was crying (I would pay money to see a video of what he did for the nearly 30 minutes unsupervised). There were some random keys in the console that I tried and none worked. I grabbed a putty knife and thought maybe I could break into the house...no luck.
I had no idea what time it was but I was thinking that Oma and/or Clint might start to get concerned soon and maybe come looking for us. I thought that I could walk to other neighbors' homes, but at 8:45 on a weekday morning I wasn't too hopeful of anyone being home. I changed shoes, put Henley in the stroller, and off we went. I told Lash we were walking to Oma's house, but as we walked I was really just praying that someone would drive by.
We made it a little over a 1/4 mile from our house when a truck drove by. After some persistent waving I was able to get the man to stop and he let me borrow his cell phone. I called Clint and he called the locksmith who showed up at our house right after we got back from our walk. It took Mr. Wilson less than 5 seconds to slide his drivers license down the door jam to pop the door open.
I was so thankful and I made sure to have Mr. Wilson make a copy of our house key so that this will NEVER happen again! Lesson learned.
No comments:
Post a Comment