howdy

Okay, this has been the week from hell! I'll try to start from the beginning and not bore everyone to death!

SO, we had a great time at the beach. The pooch was, well...an animal! She was loving jumping in the water and playing in the sand. We had so much fun with her and it was just a nice long weekend.




Every now and then you get a little reminder that you're in the south and the, errr, mentality there. Please enjoy the most red neck truck I have ever seen, or in this case, almost not seen:

Yes, that is a camo truck. I'm assuming it was a home made type thing. I wish I could have taken pictures of every person that walked by it with their mouths wide open and breaking their necks to check it out. Now that is a statement. I guess this dude sits in his truck and kills things that can't see him...? Honestly, I don't know, nor did I stick around to find out.

SO...I got back to work on Tuesday and had a ton of work to do. I literally have not been on the internet other than work stuff all week. I mean, I was under the impression that a little work ferry just comes and does all your shit while you're on vacation. Who knew things just build up and you have to deal with them yourself. Man they do things the hard way around here!

I was just getting on track yesterday when I experience what I can only describe as one of the worst days of my life. I'll try to make the story as compressed as possible.

So, Wednesday night my family and some friends that were in from out of town all met out for dinner. Afterward my 18 year old sister and her boyfriend came by the casa to pick up a television that we were giving away to the boy. I'd say it was close to 10pm. Okay, normal enough right?

Thursday morning around 8am or so my mom calls me to ask if my sister ever came over last night and if she happens to still be at my house....Hmmmm...not good. So, we're all kind of pissed. She has my mom's car and was supposed to come home last night so now mom has to take public transportation to work and that's just not fair. At this point we are chalking this up to an irresponsible teenage thing.

At 9am there is still no word but I'm thinking that she's still sleeping, perhaps at the boyfriends house, maybe they went to a party and, oohhh, ahhh, drank too much and passed out? Who knows, it's early. I am also in constant communication with my 24 year old sister at this point.

At 10:30am I'm starting to get nervous. Needless to say, not much work was getting done. Sister 24 and I are calling the boyfriend, the little sister, sending text messages, calling other friends, sister 24's bf drives by sister 18's bf's house - no sign of mom's car and no answer at the door ,we are now texting sister 16 who is in school to see if she knows anything.

At 10:45am sister 24 calls sister 18's job - she's not there but was supposed to be. They are alarmed that we haven't heard from her and neither have they. This is not like her, she's reliable and is ALWAYS at work on time and when she's supposed to be.

At 11am I'm sick to my stomach. I'm avoiding calling my parents to tell them that we have absolutely no answers. Sister 24 and I have divided the numbers for every hospital in the area and are calling them to see if she's at any of them. I've called the local police and they have no information.

At 12pm hubby is trying to talk some sense into me and telling me that if anything happened to her the police would have come to the house to let us know...it's not really helping me at this point but I appreciate his attempts to calm me down...I know he's getting worried now too.

Every possible scenario is going through our heads. They were carjacked, something happened to them at a party or out somewhere and someone either took advantage of them or took their lives, I won't even go into all of the crazy things that are going through our heads...

The thing is, my sisters and I are very close. Our whole family is close really. None of us really has any fear of calling our parents if we need help or whatever the case is and beyond that, if any one of us didn't want to or couldn't call our parents, there is NOTHING in the world that would stop us from calling one another. That's what we do. We're sisters...Now I'm scared. Something is really wrong. I am beside myself. I have a mini meltdown at work and have to tell my boss at this point what's going on because I am just at a loss. I have no idea what to do now.

At 12:45pm sister 24 is on her way to pick mom up from work and they are going to drive around looking for her. At this point dad has gone by the bf's house once and sister 24's bf has gone by the house twice. I decide to leave work and go by his house now too.

I get to the parking garage and I get a phone call from a number that I don't recognize. It's sister 18 and she's been IN JAIL ALL NIGHT!!!!!

I am relieved. I want to throw up. I want to cry. I just need to release the tension that's been in the pit of my stomach all day! The car has been impounded and I'm on my way to go pick her up. I'm also the first person she called so I tell her to hang up and call mom IMMEDIATELY to stop her worrying. I call hubby, he calls dad, I'm on the road to the big house.

It was the best, worst case scenario that we could have asked for. She was safe and what went down was not her fault. She was basically in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Without going into too much detail I will just say that she was somewhere with friends that ended up getting raided (I know! It sounds like something out of a movie) - believe me, this is not something we see here every day. My sister just happened to be there so she went down with the ship, and so did our mom's car! All of this happened about 20 minutes after my sister left my house. God I wish I would have made her stay and hang out for a little while. Oh well, she's alive and I am thankful for that. And honestly, I don't think she'll get in any trouble in this situation but I've never been in this type of trouble, or to jail for that matter, so I don't know.

My sister is a criminal! he he. I'm glad we can laugh about this now. Well, we will also never let her live this down which is always fun to have on a sister! I hope no one ever has to go through that type of situation. It was literally the most draining, scary day. I could have gone to bed at 4pm yesterday. Go hug your peeps and tell them how much you love them!

AND, thank GOD it's Friday. Have a great weekend everyone!!