yesterday..

..all my troubles seemed so far away...

as soon as i wrote that title, that familiar Beatles tune popped into my head. and it actually kind of fits the tone of this post. i want to write down the events of yesterday, mostly for myself for journaling purposes. this might be a long one, so to warn you..

first of all, my mother's birthday was this past wednesday, and my parents anniversary is today. so we decided to throw a few things together and have a big, extended celebration of both these events yesterday - saturday. most of my family went to see a play in salt lake in the late morning. we then all met together for lunch. pizza factory. delish. next, we all high-tailed it up to my sister's house for more celebrating, cookie & ice cream eating, candles, and present unwrapping. we finally got to give my parents the photobook that us siblings put together (aka snapfish put together for us and sent it to us) of our family trip to Maine this past August. we have been super excited to give this book to our parents. all the anticipation of them seeing the pictures was killing us! (my parents haven't even looked at the pictures from the trip yet....all the pictures are currently still sitting on the memory cards in their cameras....)

anyway, it was a joyous afternoon, and the grandkids were practically climbing all over my mom and dad, trying to look at the photobook too. there was discussion of Thanksgiving dinner, and then we all departed.

my brother-in-law went down to our house with us to help us switch out our porch light. while they were working on that, i got a phone call from my dad saying he had a voicemail from the guy that owns their storage unit place. our conversation went something like this:

dad: have you guys been down to the storage unit lately?

me: um, nope, not for awhile, at least a month or more.

dad: ok, because i got a call from the owner saying they did a lock check this morning and ours doesn't have a lock on it.

*enter heart sinking to the ground...*

me: oh crap.

dad: i'm going to run down there right now and check things out.

i quickly jumped in the truck and drove to meet him there. jae came shortly after that, when i called him hysterically crying.

yes, it is my parents storage unit, and yes, while our house is still under construction, we have lots of our belongings stashed in there, including every single one of our new, still-in-the-box kitchen cabinets.

sure enough. someone broke in and robbed us. the lock was completely gone. they must have busted it and taken it with them. we haven't gone through the entire kitchen list yet, but probably a good half of our brand new cabinets and microwave gone. other boxes were thrown all about. papers all over. the 'extras' for our cabinets (the hinges, etc) all over the ground. most of the storage bins were missing lids, including the one that had our stereo and surround sound speakers, as well as a dvd player and vcr. after thinking more about everything in there, we're realizing there is a side table missing, a bedside table, and who knows what else. they did leave our brand new dishwasher in there. too big and hard to move, i'm guessing.

the cops came, a police report was filed. the crime guy was called out and took pictures of footprints and dusted for fingerprints. but nothing looks too promising.

selfish or not, the thought that kept going through my head while i was driving over there was why do bad things happen to good people? seems kind of silly, i guess. of course crappy things happen. life still goes on. we've just worked so hard on this house. hours and money and sweat and tears. when we finally feel like we're getting so close to all we've wanted these past few months, something like this happens.

to put the icing on the cake, apparently about a month ago, one of the guys that works for the owner of these storage units came to clean one of the units out. at that time, the door of my parents unit was partially open. no lock. he opened it up, thinking it was empty, but found things in it, so he just closed it and went on his way. no mention to his boss or anyone that he'd found it open or without a lock. he'd just assumed people were in the middle of moving out or in, and never said a word. a month ago. no one in our family has been down to the unit since sometime in october, so we had no idea. until yesterday.

i didn't realize i was still so emotional about it until my sister called this morning and we were talking about it. it was all i could do to not start crying again. and still now, as i write it all out, it's overwhelming to think about it. so many emotions so close to the surface still.

but like i said - crap happens.

life goes on, right?
sure.