Who needs keys?

Not me, apparently! Seriously, I win the “bone-head” of the year award for sure! In my infinite wisdom and planning-ahead-ness, I decided to run home after work before picking the kids up from daycare. We had a play date with some friends, and I wanted to get everything in the car, so we could go right there from daycare. My hands were full, I pulled the front door shut and oops…the car keys were still inside. Oh, and my car was locked, too, so I literally didn’t have ANYTHING on me except two tubs of clothes, my camera, one diaper, wipes, a blanket and half full carton of goldfish. No phone, no wallet, nothing! After figuring out that I am not capable of breaking a window (how do you even do that?!?!), I decided to walk to daycare (so thankful it is close!) to pick up the kids and call Jim from there. Oh, yeah…and Jim is out of town this week!

After many phone calls and a stress level of 10, I thought we’d figured out that the kids and I would meet a locksmith at our house in 20 minutes. So the three of us walked home…no stroller of course. After some whining (by Finn who wanted me to either hold his hand or CARRY him), we finally got home and the kids had a snack (apples from daycare and the goldfish I randomly had with me). I didn’t have a way of keeping track of the time, but I could tell it had been far longer than 20 minutes, so eventually, we walked over to our neighbor and asked to use her phone. Apparently there had been a miscommunication about WHERE the locksmith would meet us, so Jim called aunt Kelsie and she came to save the day with her spare key. After TWO HOURS, we finally could go inside, eat a quick dinner (picnic style while watching Cars…Finn deserved it for being so cooperative!) and go to bed. Needless to say, we missed our play date and it WAS super frustrating, but overall, the kids did great. And if I’m making lemonade out of lemons, it was really nice to spend time so focus on just the three of us. There were no distractions: no toys, no phone, no games, no TV, no computer…just us and a blanket and lots of dandelion buds to pick! Oh and LOTS of talking by Finn.

A huge thank you to Jim for helping even though he didn’t feel well and was in the middle of a work thing, aunt Kelsie for leaving her parent’s and coming to unlock our door, the ladies at daycare who let me use the internet to find locksmith phone numbers, the guy at the community center for using their phone, even though “he wasn’t supposed to” and our neighbor who let us call Jim to make a final plan. Sheesh, all because I was trying to get things done without the kids. So sad to have missed our play date with Laena, Braeland and Lilly, especially since we scheduled it just so we would have something to do while Jim was gone. I don’t know if you’ve ever done something like this (who hasn’t?), but last night and this morning, I was obsessively checking to make sure I had my keys! Lesson: having people with your spare key that live over an hour away isn’t helpful and we need to hide a key at our house! All’s well that ends well. Man, I was tired when the kids finally went to bed.