Had quite an exciting time last night!

Yesterday afternoon was one of those afternoons where I was ready to quit being a mom for a bit. Since that isn't an option, I called my good friend Tab to come over. Tab gets off work early, she's spectacularly single and she is ALWAYS fun to hang out with, plus she loves my kids and is SO good with them. I asked her if she would please hang out with the kids while I got some stuff done, which she was great about. We had a good time!

James got home around 5:30 and I had cooked up a plan - Tab and I would go out for dinner while James did bedtime (granted, I had already fed all 3 kids, changed Declan into jammies, and had them all cleaned up). As usual, he was agreeable so off we went - in Tab's car, which was nice of her because she was going to have to drive me all the way back out into the country after dinner instead of straight home to her apartment in town, but she didn't care. She's so cool like that.

We hemmed and hawed over where to go, and finally chose the Mexican restaurant. At the last minute I wanted to go for Chinese, but Tab overruled and we went Mexican. We had a great time, lots of chatting, good pop (soda, if you MUST be that way) and food. We were in there for over 2 hours.

We walk out into the parking lot and I kid you not, her car is GONE. We looked, and looked, and looked some more, but seriously, we BOTH knew where we had parked and it isn't there. The police station is only 1 block away so we walked up there to see if it had been towed for some insane reason. It hadn't. Holy. Poop. At this point, Tab isn't sure if she DID lock it, but we 100% know she had the keys the entire time and NO ONE else has a set. Ok so this isn't good. At all. They take all our information and tell us we might hear something in a few hours. Ugh. I called my mom (in town) to come get us and we decide to walk back to the restaurant to see if anyone there knows anything.

Again, I kid you not, as we near the parking lot we see her car, parked, unmanned, sitting in a COMPLETELY different parking spot, different part of the lot entirely. FREAKY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! As we're standing there, thinking we just MIGHT have lost our 30 year old minds, the cop pulls up and we tell him it's baaaaaaaack. So he pulls in, another cop car pulls in, the checking it all over ensues. The radio station has been changed (she had a Christian CD playing, they switched to hard rock, go figure!), there are candy wrappers on the floor and the passenger side seat was moved WAY back. NOTHING was missing, nothing was added, nothing was damaged, the fuel was nearly the same as previous, but the engine was still warm. As Tab is going over everything with one of the cops, a wrecker truck pulls in to see if we need his help. The police officer says, "No, someone decided to take a joy ride in someone else's car" and the wrecker guy says, "Again??" so we assume this has been happening.

Long story but we head back to the police station so they can pull fingerprints off the radio, etc. We also had to be questioned separately and they let us go, but poor Tab. She is so shaken up, and I am so p'ssd off for her. What a violating thing!! We hung out for a while and then she finally brought me home and went home herself...she said she slept well after finally falling asleep.

Interesting though...the car wasn't hotwired and no one else has keys. How in the world did someone do this?? Hopefully the police can figure this one out. It's probably bored teenagers in Pella looking for a good time but know this, we are on to you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Or I wish we were.