Locked Out

We just returned from Arizona today after being there for a week. We drove and took two days to get there and another 2 days to get back as well as spending 6 nights there. It was really nice. As we were driving there, about half way through the first day, Josh asked if I had a spare key for his car, which I didn't. He's become pretty adept at locking his keys in the car so having a spare is pretty important. I told him he'd have to get one of the spares when he comes back home next week. So we went on with our trip.

Fast forward a week. We'd had such a good visit with family and friends and were packing up on Thursday night so we could check out of the hotel on Friday morning. I had packed most of the stuff in the hotel room and we were ready to carry it all down to the cars and grabbed our keys, only Josh couldn't find his keys. He thought one of the kids had taken them but after looking and all the kids denying taking them, we decided to go look on and around the cars to see if he had put them down when we were coming in earlier. Sure enough, we got down to the parking lot to discover that they were in his ignition with the doors locked. The front desk found us a couple of wire hangers and we proceeded to try and break into the car again. As we were working on it, Kora was playing with the room card and dropped it into the engine. Now our kids were fast asleep in the hotel room, oblivious to knocking and we were locked out of the car and couldn't get the room key or car keys. An hour and a half later, I had gone to the front desk for a new room key, Josh finally got the car open, we finished loading his things and went to bed. Talk about a pain in the butt. But, it was Josh's fault, not mine, right?

Fast forward to Friday. The kids and I were driving home and stopped at a truck stop for gas, toilet and stretch break. As we're walking through the store to the restroom I found a kit with a slim-jim and all the tools for breaking in when you lock yourself out and it was only $12.99. It's the perfect gift for my husband and one we can both laugh about as well as being useful, so I bought it and put it in the back of the van.

Fast forward to Saturday. We stopped at a gas station, filled up and then parked to go in for a restroom break. We all got some drinks, I got a 5 hour energy, because I was totally exhausted and needed help to stay awake and drive, and we went to load back up. As we're walking out to the car I start getting out my keys only to discover that I didn't have them. I retraced my steps to figure out when I had them last and looked in the window to see them in one of the booster seats in the back and all the doors locked. Dang it, I put them down to get Kora out of her seat and now it's my fault. We're at a gas station in a very small town and 6 kids and I are locked out of the car. At least I had my wallet and I had actually bought all the kids drinks. The van isn't as easy to break into as the mustang-we have power nothing. So I had the guy at the counter call somebody to come and bail me out. 20 minutes and $45 later we were finally on our way.

So this story has three morals. First, don't laugh at your husband when he locks his keys in the car and think that he's the only one that does it, or you might just have it thrown in your face two days later. Second, check to make sure you have your keys every time you get out of the car or it might take you an hour and a half or cost you all the cash in your wallet to get back into your car. And third, when you buy a slim-jim, don't store it in your car. It does absolutely no good when your keys are locked inside with it.

The end.