The Story

If you've read my post "Chasing Cars" then I'm sure you are wondering what is the story behind the post. Well here it is.

Monday was labor day. We didn't do a whole lot during the day. I went out to lunch with my parents as a belated Father's Day present and then hung out at home. Later that night we met some friends at a park for a picnic and had a great time! The food everyone brought was delicious and despite the park being kind of ghetto, it was beautiful. The husbands played a little football and us girls sat and talked while we watched the kids play. It was fun. We decided to call it a night and head home as it was starting to get dark. Josef loaded up all our stuff in the trunk of our car and shut it. As we are about to hop in and drive home when we realized (much to our dismay) that Josef had left his keys in the trunk and I had left my keys at home. Thankfully some of our friends hadn't left yet so we decided that Josef would stay at the park with Sofia (borrowing their stroller) and they would drive me home to get my keys and drive Josef's car back to the park. So our friends dropped me off at home (just so you know the park was not close by) and when I arrived I remembered that I had let Sofia play with my keys earlier in the day and had no idea where they were! Looking outside I noticed the sun was quickly setting. Worried about Josef and Sofia being in a sketchy part of town after dark I frantically set out to find my keys. I looked in all the usual places first and when I didn't find them my pulse quickened and my searching became more frantic. I tore the house apart. Crawling on the ground trying to think like a toddler, looking in the fridge, looking under and in the dryer, digging through the trash, checking every nook and crany in our house; I couldn't find those keys. I was becoming exhausted, but I couldn't stop. I had no other choice. It was dark out and I was still worried about Josef and Sofia. I talked to him on the phone several times. Josef kept urging me on and telling me to calm down.

After more then 40 minutes of searching, I called my friend Carly with the idea that she could go to the park in the dark in a part of town she had never been too (yeah great idea) to pick up Sofia and bring her back to her house to go to bed until we could get things sorted out. As I was attempting to describe to Carly where exactly the park was I randomly picked up a pillow in our office and low and behold there were my keys. Elated, I hung up on Carly, grabbed the keys and bolted out the door. I pulled Josef's car out of the alley way and was about to turn right on our street to head to the park when I realized I didn't have my wallet. Not wanting to get pulled over without a license I turned left and pulled up to the front of the house, put the car (which has a manual transmission) in neutral, turned the car off, and pulled on the e-brake. I ran in to the house and grabbed my wallet. I fumbled with my keys trying to lock the front door. As I turned around I was horrified to find that the car was gone! For half a second I thought "Oh no someone stole our car", but during this thought I looked down our dark street and saw Josef's car. Rolling backwards. Frantically I chased the car down the street, again fumbled with the keys, jumped in the moving car, and slammed my foot on the brake. I flipped a u-turn and drove back to the park. From then on things went smoothly. Two and a half hours after packing up our car to head home, we finally arrived at our desired destination exhausted and sweaty.

I can't help but think that Heavenly Father must have a great sense of humor because I'm sure it was quiet comical to see me chasing Josef's little car down our darkened street.