Okay, well, that was exciting . . .

Tace, I have the best ever excuse for not finishing decorating the tree. I'll start at the beginning (as I would have with the police had they shown up!) (do I have your attention?) . . . we hung the lights outside, I put up garland lights over our new built in work stations and my art space in our family room, put up a little tree in the family room with lights, put the new lights on our new fake tree (it always takes longer the first time 'till you know how many strings you need - we had to adjust a couple of times and add 2, not one, but 2 new strings as it is so much larger than old one), put out some other old tattered and well used decorations, and we were all happily gathered around watching my goofball daughter hang the ornaments with great entertaining finesse, when I went outside to grab a beverage. Everyone decided to take a break and kind of followed me from the living room into the family room - we have an extra fridge on the back patio just for drinks (how wasteful are we? but good entertainers!). No sooner had I started back in with said beverage than we heard 3 very loud gunshots - I mean LOUD. They were just on the other side of our back fence. (my husband with his expert gun sound identification skills that so many men seem to have said it sounded like a
"9 mil".) Our house is a unique, as I have explained before, in that we have one street on the back of our house and a different street in the front. We actually could have two addresses - we're an island of sorts. Anyway, we all hit the deck, I mean HIT THE DECK! I CRAWLED back in the house, my hubby sent the kids to their rooms on hands and knees and turned out the lights. I crawled to the phone and called 911 and everyone but my husband laid on our bellies and tried to peek out the windows. So, I try to be calm with the police and answer all their questions, my husband takes precautions I won't spell out as they scared me as much as the gunshots - but Papa Bear was out in force we'll say. Grandma is peeking around the couch calling the dogs in. And we wait, and wait, and wait. No police, no more shots, nothin'.

So we call neighbors - they heard the shots as loud as we did but apparantly I am the only one that actually called the police - how sad is that? We all hear gunshots on our street and no one calls the police? I mean they were feet, mere feet from us. That upsets me more than anything because A) the police probably think I'm crazy and B)since when do we excuse gunshots like we do leafblowers? That is distressing. It's not like we hear them often around here. We are actually in a very safe area - I know people that leave their keys in their cars and doors unlocked in our neighborhood. Anyhoo, this all happened a couple of hours ago - the police have circled a few times, just a minute or two ago for the 4th or 5th time but they haven't talked to us or actually gotten out of their cars as far as I can tell. We were staying away from windows until just a few minutes ago. My daughter, of course, had to call her friends and freak out - she talks like a sailor when she's excited (my cute, pure, innocent goody two shoes daughter knows more swear words than me) - she did this on her tummy in the bedroom nearest the family room where we were "hiding". I heard her tell one of her friends she wanted a bullet proof vest for Christmas - that made me laugh so hard I had tears, the delivery and timing were a "you had to be there moment". It was like the conversation they were having went from gunshots to "what do you want for Christmas?" in a split second.

So, we start to realize it's all over, whatever it was, and we get more comfortable moving around except my girl who is still hiding an hour later. We're giving my daughter a bad time about freaking out (in a quite humorous dorky way - we all did a little bit, but she was quite dramatic for quite some time). My son and I get brave and decide to go be CSI and look for shells or bullet casings on the street. I promised to put anything we found in ziplocs and then my husband makes me promise NOT to do an autopsy should we find a body. We didn't find anything but we weren't really brave enough to be out there long at all and we kinda rushed through our investigation. My husband finally goes to bed, then Grandma. I go outside again to throw something away and I hear someone on our roof. My heart was pounding through my chest. Every bit of spit in my mouth evaporated and I could barely talk. I came to the door and told my kids to go get dad and he comes prepared again. We sneak outside to get a look at the roof and my husband looks at me and says "it's raining" "you heard rain on the roof". He was right - not a thing up there but raindrops - it had just started to rain. I didn't even know it was supposed to rain tonight. Hubby went back to bed, eyes rolling, me laughing with that "I can't believe what a dork I am", my daughter about ready to strangle me for scaring the pooh out of her again. But, I have to say, it is all I can do to sit here and type this with my back to the big sliding door. I am freaking out more than I thought. My daughter is sleeping with hubby tonight. I don't know where I'm going to sleep - I'm chicken too.

So, the tree is only half dressed. It is not done Tace. And I think I have a pretty darn good alibi. Wish I could think of a good pic to post with this - a real grabber but I am too freaked out sitting here to look for one tonight. Maybe I'll add it tomorrow. Whooh - what a night!