New Year's Past

Years ago, I can't even remember the year, Joe, we're no longer married, & I were visiting my family in Wisconsin over the Holidays. For New Year's we decided to take a bus and go gambling with the family. We had a blast. It was pretty much my first time at a casino. I spent most of the night pulling down the lever on the .5 game, wanting my $$ to last all night. I think we pretty much broke even, but we sure had fun. And the great thing was, we could just sit on the bus and be delivered back to the parking lot where we left our cars.

That's when the REAL fun began. My mom always leaves a key hidden on the porch so we figured there would be no problems getting in the house in the middle of the night. Our kids were home, the oldest babysitting, and all sleeping upstairs in the same bedrooms we slept in as kids. Nice and cozy. The only problem was, no one remembered to tell the kids not to lock one of the locks because mom doesn't have a key for that lock. So, here we all sat, in the middle of the night, a coooooold Wisconsin winter night, trying to figure out how we are going to get in. I threw some snowballs at the upstairs window, to no avail. I threw a few small pieces of icicle at the window....this was the room where our son was sleeping. We pounded on the door. After 15 - 20 min. of trying different things, trudging through the snowand snowbanks, my mom announces that sometimes she opens the little kitchen window above the sink! Aahha!! We tried it and sure enough, it wasn't locked.

Sooooo, there's an awning above the window, there's a huge green shrub in front of the window and being that Joe was the smallest of the men present, he was "the chosen one" .......to crawl through the window. My brothers hoisted him up, he pushed the window up as far as it would go and began his entry! And this is a small kitchen window that doesn't even shove up all the way & he's wearing all the winter garb. On one end, the boys are pushing and shoving, trying to get him up and in & on the other end, Joe is trying to crawl over the window sill, which is always loaded with trinkets & stuff, over the faucets, dishwashing soap, sponges and other cleaning paraphernalia and oh yeah, a SINK FULL OF DISHES...no dishwashing machine here! And of course, he's going head first so he's trying to figure out how to not land on the floor on his head!

Meanwhile, we are all outside, laughing our a$$e$ off, in the cold, in the middle of the night....trying not to wake the neighbors....we are just lucky someone didn't call the cops on us!!! So, we all got inside, where it was warm, still laughing, picking up all the stuff Joe knocked off the sill and the sink...let's just say - it wasn't a quiet operation!

Next day, we asked the kids about their night....they said they never heard a thing!

That was so long ago but it still brings a chuckle whenever I think of it!
Happy 2010 everyone!