4:30 a.m. AWAKENINGS

So, Darrell once again lost his keys as he does every weekend. He always seems to end up with my set somewhere during the weekend and leaving his in his pants or on a counter. This morning around 4:30, I woke up to "Geez, just get up already!" I could barely hear it because Darrell insists that he have a fan running all night which blocks out almost every sound. I hate it because I worry that I won't be able to hear the kids. Apparently, once again, I am right! Anyways, as I sat there I noticed that it sounded more like a car alarm. I went to the front door and opened it to listen. Low and behold, it was our van's alarm going off! I unlocked it with my remote, thinking that would help, but it just kept going. Then I ran through the house looking for my snow boots or something to slip on. Darrell was still not quite awake. I had him get dressed and he ran out any tryed to unlock it. The dang thing was still going off!! I found my boots and ran out to unlock it with the key. I figured that it would stop once I put the key in the ignition and started it. Atleast I tryed. I popped the hood thinking maybe I could undo the battery. As I franticly searched for the latch, I was being defened by the horn blaring in my ears. I got the hood up and realized that I would probably need tools! Meanwhile, Darrell was looking around the house for the phone to call the base cops. I still don't know what they would have done. We couldn't find the phone, any of them!! Darrell yells, "Call the house with your cell phone!" As I am on the phone, listening to the house phone ring, I am thinking to myself "Why don't we just use the cell phone to call, Duh." I find the house phone and run to the computer to look up the phone number to the SP's. In the middle of all of this, Ezekiel comes out of his room and says "Mom, stop doing that!" I try to comfort him by saying "I know honey, just go back to bed! We are trying to fix it." Darrell in the meantime, had run to the shed to get tools to undo the battery and finds his keys in the lock. He was thinking that I had obviously already been to get tools and then remembered his keys were missing. He looks down and notices the light blinking on the remote! He runs back in and shows me. He says "We are just going to have to smash it! I don't know what...." That's when I reminded him of this glasses repair kit we had just bought last month. (glad we bought one now) We ran to the bedroom and I unscrewed the screws on the remote and popped the battery out. YEAH! What a way to find lost keys! We had a little laugh, gave Ezekiel some more cough medicine and now after that excitement, I am going back to bed. By the way, Noah slept through the whole thing. Then again, he did sleep through earthquakes in Japan all the time!