We are trying to get life "back to normal" after the break-in, but it is a harder task than I thought it would be. For those of you that don't know, our house was broken into April 26th. Some friends of ours that live in the area were broken into a little over a week prior so I had tried to change my "routine" in case anyone was watching the house. I guess I didn't change it well enough because the kids and I came home to a house that was a wreck. Here's the story...
When I opened the garage door I noticed a couple coolers that were out of place, but I excused it thinking Shane might have gotten off work early, been home, and then left again. We needed to pick up a table and chairs that we had loaned for the Easter celebration so I thought he had left to get that taken care of. Brooklyn took off in the house to change her clothes to be able to play outside when it hit me, maybe she shouldn't be the first one in the house. (Keep in mind that this thought process all took place in about 15 seconds.) I quickly called out to her to get back outside. Luckily she had only made it into the laundry room because if she would have gone further she would've seen a mess. To get in the robbers kicked in our back door. A portion of the door frame and our trim was lying on the dining room floor and the door was left open.
They pulled out all the drawers in the kitchen, not sure what they were looking for, but they didn't take any of my fun kitchen gadgets! At that point when I saw the door and the drawers in the kitchen, I quickly exited the house and called 911.
The sheriff's deputy was at our house in less than 5 minutes. I was shocked that they got there so fast, but they said they had been working 3 other cases in the area that day. After calling Grandma & Grandpa Koci to help out with the kids, and calling Shane to have him come home, we had to do a walk through to see what was missing or damaged. Surprisingly they did not make much of a mess, or at least as much of a mess as I envisioned the house would look like if someone broke in. They took my jewelry armoire out of our closet and into Garrett's room. They then pulled all the drawers out and emptied them. Strangely enough, they didn't take any of the jewelry that was in there. Not that I have that much expensive jewelry, but I do have a couple pieces that I would consider expensive/valuable. Walking into our room, I saw that they had rummaged through our top dresser drawer, the junk drawer, then I noticed the closet. Oh my, they pulled all of Shane's shirts off the shelves and threw them on the floor. I couldn't tell exactly what they took, but Shane knew exactly what it was... his tobacco pipes and one of his guns. They also found our camera and new camcorder, grrrrr. I had not copied the pictures I had taken from Easter yet. Sadly that was on my to do list for that day, but I had pushed it to be an afternoon/evening task.
After a quick look in Brooklyn's room and it appeared as though they didn't even go in there. I will admit her room was messy from her own doing so it was a little hard to tell, but I think they saw the doll stuff and figured there was nothing that they were interested in. (I've now decided to hide all my important stuff in her closet in hopes if this would happen again the robbers would bypass her room again!)
Downstairs was a little depressing. In the family room they took our wii and all the wii accessories that I have conveniently put away in a little tote. It looked like they tried to take our TV, but it must have been too much work for them to get off the wall. Yay for our difficult TV mount! In the guitar room closet they found the gun safe. Instead of taking the entire safe, they went out to our garage, looked through the tools and used our claw hammer to break into the safe. They were kind enough to leave the hammer behind though. (Ha!) Thankfully they left the guitars alone. I guess they didn't realize that just one of Shane's guitars was worth more than several of the items they did take. Like Brooklyn's room, they did not mess with anything in Andrew's room.
The thought of not feeling safe in your own home is one that can only be summed up by saying frustrating. The kids, understandably, have had a pretty difficult time with the whole situation. Andrew has been camping out in Brooklyn's room for several nights in a sleeping bag. That first night, Andrew and Brooklyn took turns every 3 minutes coming into our room and waking me up because they heard something, or they couldn't sleep because of bad dreams, or whatever else they could dream up. Finally we let them climb in bed with us, and let me just say our bed is definitely not big enough for four people. Shane couldn't sleep so he went downstairs to the couch and I tried my hardest to at least get an hour of sleep... and then Garrett was awake. What a rough night!
We have thankfully got past the sleepless nights. We have an alarm system now and Andrew has moved back down to his room. They still are a little apprehensive when coming home from being gone. Andrew and Brooklyn hang out in the car or garage until Shane or I go in first. I must admit, I don't really like going in the house by myself either. I "know" that everything will be ok in the back of my mind, but there is still that queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach when I open the door.
My prayer at this point is that the sheriff's department can catch whoever is doing this. I don't really care about the items that they took, although it would be nice to get them all back, I just don't want this to happen to anyone else. In talking with the sheriff's department, there have been close to 20 other incidents in the southwest part of the county already. They might not all me related, but I do know that several of them are because they have had the same mo... mess with the jewelry but not take any, take guns and small electronics.
