An up close and personal experience with our friendly, neighborhood firefighters

This weekend is an extremely busy weekend, which is preceding an extremely busy coming week. Yesterday (Saturday) I was at our church for the majority of the day decorating my classroom for VBS, for which I have been coerced...I mean volunteered to teach a class. Immediately following my arrival home from the church, I then got the girls ready to go and headed out the door again with my mom to go to a picnic that a friend from work was throwing so that she could show me off. Wait, I mean so she could show off the girls. They are definitely cuter and more exciting than me. We got back home around 8:30 pm. The girls went straight to bed. In case you're wondering where the boys were during all this excitement, they're off having some excitement of their own. Josh took the boys camping. They left yesterday afternoon and will arrive home probably later this evening.

So, this morning I hemmed and hawed about whether to attempt to get the girls ready and go to church all on my own this morning. The thought of having to sit all alone wasn't really even a deciding factor..although it usually is. But in the end, I decided that due to the coming busyness of next week, I would forgo the time/effort/work that it takes to get everyone ready and out the door in time for church. So instead I decided to get some errands run. Everything's a little easier with 2 less kids, right?

First on my agenda for this day was to go to Home Depot. I have decided to go a new route in my kitchen decor and needed to pick up a couple things. So I made it to Home Depot, made my rounds, asked some questions, and headed to the check-out with my purchases. I decided to do the self-checkout lane since there was no line. The very nice checker girl oohed and ahhed over the girls and thought they were very cute. (And of course, she was right) She noticed the fascination that the girls had with a couple of balloons that they had attached to the register and offered to make the girls some balloons. I accepted her offer, knowing that the girls are nuts over balloons. So we patiently waited while she inflated them some balloons.

I pulled the choo choo wagon out to our car, unlocked it, put my purse in the back, dropped in my keys and then proceeded to unload the girls from the wagon. Rather than getting in and out of the car, I did my 'new' routine and just unbuckled each girl from the wagon and set her in the car. Then when I had all the girls unloaded I only have to climb inside one time and buckle them all in, no problem. Well, unbeknownst to me, while I was in the middle of unloading everyone, Adelynn had climbed into the front seat and pushed the 'Lock' button on the door, which in turn, locked all the doors. I did not realize this. So I buckled all the girls into their seats, closed the sliding door on the van, (so as to not let the balloons blow out the door). I then loaded the choo choo wagon into the back of the van, closed that door and headed to the drivers door. It was locked. I'm pretty sure my heart stopped. But no problem, right? I have 4 other doors to check. One by one, I checked every door. They were all locked. I literally felt my stomach hit the ground and all the color drain from my face. I had no idea what to do, my mind was totally blank. Not only were the girls inside, but so were my keys, my phone and everything. I raced back into Home Depot, the whole way saying, "ohmygosh, ohmygosh over and over, not knowing what else to do. My only thought was that there was nothing I could do just standing there and maybe they sold things that unlocked car doors. I went back to the girl who made us the balloons. I'm not real sure why..I guess I just thought that she would remember who I was. She made some calls in different departments to find out if there was anything they sold that could help (besides a hammer or something). FYI: Home Depot does not sell things that unlock cars. I then made a slew of my own phone calls. To my mother in law at home, on her cell, to my father in law, to my mom...no one answered. In reality, I don't know what any of those people could have done to help. Josh has the only spare key and he was probably 2 hours away.

A very nice employee came out and walked out to the car with me. Then a manager came out. They were told by someone over the walkie-talkie to call 911. I've never had to have someone call 911 for an emergency with my own family. It's very daunting, humbling...I was trying so hard to suppress my panic at this point. I so did not want to be "that" person that loses control when something bad happens. But man, did I want to sob. Some tears did leak out, but overall I think I kept my panicked feelings under strict control. It helped very much that one, the girls were not crying or upset at all. They kept smiling and waving to me. And two, the lady employee kept talking to me in an upbeat way and about other things such as why when they landscaped the parking lot of Home Depot, did they choose to put in bushes with thorns. I've always wondered that myself. And the manager waited out there with us too and told me a story about leaving his kids in his truck and having the truck roll away and locking himself in the family car when he was 6 because he didn't want to get a shot at the doctor. God bless these people. Seriously. I would have totally been a wreck had it not been for them.

The fire department finally came. I say finally...it was really only like 5 minutes or so. But it felt like a lifetime. The 4 big firemen climbed out of their truck, asked me about the procedure to unlock the car and used this tool thingy to make a space between the window and the frame and they slid in this long blue thing towards the unlock button. Then they pumped it up with the same thing that they use to pump up the arm band to take your blood pressure. I wish I could have seen better what they were doing because it looked really interesting. All of a sudden the unlock button pressed and we flung open the car doors and saw three pink-cheeked smiling babies looking at us while playing with their big, red balloons. The firefighters all gathered around and looked at the girls and commented about how adorable they were, and how they all looked different, etc and they felt them to make sure they weren't overheated. The girls were fine. I thanked everyone several times as much as I could without breaking into sobs. I got into the car and had to sit there for several minutes to compose myself. "All's well that ends well", I guess...whatever that means.