Wouldn't You Have Been Scared??

This is a really great story. It'll probably be a long one, but totally worth the read!

So let me preface the story by telling you a few things:

1. This happened back in November

2. Justin was in China for the week

3.My cell phone was dead/missing- not an unusual occurance :)

So on Tuesday nights, I play on a city league volleyball team and we play late at night, like 9:30pm to around midnight. This one particular week I was looking for someone to come sit in my house and listen to the baby monitor for me while I went and played. Since we were still kinda new to the area and ward, I didn't know who could stay up that late babysitting, so I emailed our ward's social email list asking if anyone could come over and I would pay them. One sweet older lady named Sue emailed me back and said she could do it. I didn't know her at all but she said that she has 8 kids and something like 22 grandkids, and since she went to our church I said ok and set a time for her to come over.

When she arrived at my house, she seemed like a super nice, cute grandma, and normal enough so I left to make the 20 minute drive to go play. I told her that my cell phone was missing but gave her my neighbor's and mother in laws numbers just incase something were to happen. Now fast forward to 11:30pm. I pulled up into my driveway and noticed that Sue's car was gone. I immediately started to worry but thought that maybe my neighbor had went over there and told Sue to go home that she would watch the house for me. I was fully expecting to walk inside and see at least someone! So I walk inside and there was no one. No babysitter, no lights were on, nothing. This was when I started to get a little worried.My thoughts were: How could she do this! Did she just go crazy and think it was ok to leave my kids sleeping here?! What if something were to happen to them?! My first instinct was to run upstairs and make sure that my sleeping babies were ok. As I turned the corner to go up the stairs, I stopped dead in my tracks. The water in our master bedroom was running and I had remembered that I had locked our bedroom door before I left, mostly because it was a mess and I didn't want the babysitter to see it. My heart started pounding and I had a bad feeling about this. All kinds of crazy thoughts entered my head:

-Maybe Ethan got up and noticed that someone wasn't here and got scared and is washing his hands in our bathroom -that was the most sane thought for sure.

-Someone broke into my house, killed the babysitter, sent one of their friends off with her car, killed our children and is cleaning up the mess in our bath tub

-Someone is drowning the kids in the bath tub

-Mason is dead

-Ellie and Ethan are dead

I was not prepared to walk into our room or the kids bedrooms and see the bloody mess that my mind was telling me was there, nor was I prepared to see my kids dead. Now keep in mind that I did not have a cell phone, or else I would have already called 911 by that time. So being completely unarmed and not about to walk into that room, I yelled "HELLO!" a few times. I didn't get any answer and i heard the water shut off. So the best thing I could think of to do was to do just what I did. I ran down the stairs, left the front door open, ran to my neighbor's house and beat on their door until someone answered. Clay (the husband) opened the door to what I'm sure looked like a crazy, scared out of her mind lady. I rambled out the story and begged him to come over, to go upstairs and see what was going on. I was fully expecting him to say, "Sure, let me go grab my shotgun and i'll blow the brains out of whoever has touched your precious children." Instead, he calmly says, "Let me go put a shirt on and I'll be right down." I'm shaking and trembling and trying to be patient. He comes down, gunless to my dissapointment, and heads over to our house with me. We go inside and I'm just about near to a breakdown asking him to please go upstairs when I hear a familiar voice say, "Ash, Ash it's me. It's ok" The voice was Justin's but I was confused because he just yelled it from our bedroom but didn't come down. I still couldn't see him." I just stand there saying nothing and looking at Clay like what's going on?! I finally yelled up there, "Justin, is that you?!" He answered me and I just start bawling. Clay made sure I was ok and that it really was Justin and left. As soon as I closed the door, I dropped to the floor and cried my eyes out for a good 10 minutes. I guess all that adrenaline had built up and I couldn't help but cry it all out. I finally made my way upstairs to see a very shocked and surprised husband who had just gotten out of the shower- which is why I heard water running and why he didn't come downstairs when he heard Clay and I there. I just layed in his arms and cried for a good 10 minutes more before I could even really talk to him!

So what happened, right? Justin was suppose to be in China! Apparently there was a problem with his Visa and he was stuck in San Fransico for a day trying to get it taken care of. It turned out that it didn't work out and he wanted to surprise me by flying back home! He knew I was out playing volleyball and that I would have a babysitter there so it was the perfect situation to surprise me. Or scare the living daylights out of me...either one :) So basically, no cell phone, late at night, and an unfamiliar babysitter made this one scary experience! But what a sweet husband to want to surprise his wife, right?!

After I calmed down and said welcome home to my hubby, we had a dang good laugh about this one! My neighbors may or may not think I am still crazy but we had a good laugh together too. Now it's kind of the running joke in our family about whatever you do Justin, don't try to surprise Ashleigh! She'll call 911 and have the neighbor blow your brains out with a shotgun!

Please tell me that you would have been terrified too?! And now that everyone knows what a crazy lady I am, I hope you enjoyed the story! I thought it was too good of one to not write down for future posterity! :)