Yesterday I was vacuuming the carpet and needed to empty the filter. Christian was in his exersaucer, and Manny was taking a nap, so I thought I'd run downstairs real quick to the garbage can....it'd only take a mili-second.

The one thing I forgot was that John couldn't find his keys yesterday morning, so instead of locking the deadbolt, he locked the door knob when he left for work. We NEVER lock the door knob, b/c we don't have a key, but he didn't want to leave the door unlocked because the kiddos and myself were still asleep (he left at 6:30 a.m.).

So I run downstairs, empty the filter, run back upstairs only to find the door was LOCKED. I tried to remain calm. Our house is technically two stories, but really only one (confusing, I know). Our house sits on top of our garage, as well as an inlaw (apartment) connected to the garage, so the window that was available to crawl through is about 13+ feet high. Luckily I opened the window to let in some air while I was cleaning.

First, I ran downstairs to our neighbor to see if I could borrow his phone to call John (I don't know what John could do 30 minutes away without a car - he carpools - but calling him made me feel better), but he didn't pick up his phone - bah! I can feel the tears starting to build. I think to myself, it's okay Marisa, you can figure this out.

I ran next door to see if our neighbors had a ladder so that I could try and crawl through the window. The good news was that our neighbor did have a ladder, the bad news was that it was about a 9-10 foot ladder.

I ran to the neighbor on the other side of our house, in the hopes that they had a bigger ladder - no one was home.

So we used the 10 foot ladder, it was our only option. My next door neighbor set the ladder up, scaled my house, and climbed through the window - relief! I could hear Christian crying in terror as some weird stranger entered our house. I also realized that Jake (our dog) is a HORRIBLE guard dog. He didn't bark or growl when our neighbor entered through the window.

All in all, it was the most frightening 15 minutes of my LIFE thus far.