BURGLARY!!!!

Do not be alarmed, Corky is fine. In fact, no kitties were harmed in the making of this blog post. The sad fact is that somebody, indeed, broke into our place this morning at the unkind time of 3:45 am. There were some loud noises that woke me up. Once I decided that it was not the usual Corky trouble that often comes this early in the morning, I decided to check it out. Once downstairs I found the front door open and then noticed the car keys missing. The car was still there so I did some more checking. My wallet and watch were gone. I got Carla up and we called the police. While we waited for them, I called the credit card companies and our bank. The burglars clearly did not come far into the house since Carla's laptop was still on the kitchen table. The police arrived and pointed out where the robbers had pried the door open. Then we gave them the full list of stolen stuff:

1. Car keys - we get a new car today so not a big deal
2. House & garage keys - time to move!
3. Ben's wallet - ouch
4. Carla's purse - ouch, big time, that was Italian leather
5. Change jar - around 50 Euros, those two dollar coins really accumulate
6. Carter's school bag - not much more than some dirty underwear in there
7. Ben's watch - they took the Citizen and left the Tag Heuer - idiots
8. Our camera - had all our Paris pics and several of Carter in his underwear

The police collected our bank account number and took statements. They also want a picture of my watch. Carla suggested they just look for somebody carrying an L.L. Bean bag embroidered with "Carter"

So, we are left with essentially no cash and no way to easily get money from our account. Looks like we are going to spend today getting new ID's and changing the locks. We are going back and forth between relief and anger. It's 5:30 am as I type this and we are mostly thankful that Carter slept through the entire thing.