It was an evening like any other. We ate dinner, we read to the kids before bed and then we all went to sleep. I looked at the clock, it was 9:48 PM. At 12:01 AM, Rich said, "Someone has been in the house."
Naturally, I was a bit groggy, confused and I thought Rich was dreaming.
I jumped out of bed and headed straight to the kids who were all sleeping soundly.
We walked around the house for the remainder of the night in shock noting how the burglers entered, what they took and what they didn't take.
While we slept.
I think there were two of them. They entered through the second story kitchen window which was the only window without bars. I am guessing it took them about five minutes to sweep through the house.
Rich had fallen asleep with his iPod on and headphones in his ears while listening to NPR (which always puts him to sleep). One of the burglers disconnected the headphones from the iPod and took it from his sleeping body.
You must be wondering if we are the deepest sleepers on the planet. The answer is no, both Rich and I wake up in a pinch if one of our kids mumbles in the night.
I hardly slept for the following two weeks.
I'd like to say this sort of thing does not happen all the time, but it does. While the town we live in is very awesome, it is also a town in a Central American country.
This sort of thing happens all the time and the best one can do is play it smart and raise the barrier to entry.
We have since had bars installed on the windows, picked up a security alarm, motion sensor lights and we are dilligent about placing our belongings away at night. We really were sitting ducks, as they say. All the i-devices on the table next to the bed, the cameras in a neat pile on the counter, wallets in plain sight and two laptops right on the desk.
The bits and pieces stolen are just things. All of our data, photos and music is in the cloud. Passports were left untouched (the new US passports have GPS chips, that is the word in the street). The GPS on our I-devices was not activated, but It will be in the future (I think eventually word will get around and all I-devices have the ability to be tracked and like passports, will remain untouched).
I have had many thoughts like: What if one of the kids would have woken up? What if Rich had woken up?
Although we were greatly inconvenienced and heavily spooked, all are without harm. For that, I am grateful.
So, that explains the break from blogging.