An Emotional Yesterday

Yesterday Grace and I made strawberry cupcakes, pink frosting, and sandwich filling for our Pinkalicious tea party that we were going to have last night, while the boys went camping.

I heard a lot of sirens outside and helicopters flying around as we worked, but we live in the ghetto and (sadly) it doesn't phase me anymore.

I also heard a lot of "humming" noises, which again, didn't really make me think anything was out of the ordinary. Just thought it was from construction or someone was getting their carpets done.

We left to go pick up Adam a few hours later, and I was shocked when I opened my door. There were 7 cameras in front of our house. The parking spaces in front of our house were filled with news vans (who were the source of the humming), and the roads were taped off with police tape.

The buildings in our apartment complex have been burglarized for over a year, by the same group of men. Night or day, home or not. It's terrible. Yesterday, they got another apartment. It was called into the police. While the police were en route, another apartment was burglarized by the same group of guys. The sweet maintenance workers told them to stop. Both were shot, one killed. At noon. Just a few apartments down from us.

These two men had just been in our apartment two days ago fixing our bathtub. The man that died was so kind. Always joking with Adam and Grace, and telling me how cute Josh was. He always waved as we passed each other and said, "hello."

It's tragic what happened. Simply tragic.

After we came home from school, we stayed on our porch to watch the reporters. Adam had a lot of fun watching the reporters do their live 4:00 news story: he would stand on our porch and watch them talk (they were just broadcasting a few yards from our porch), then he would run inside and watch it on the news.

Later, most of the reporters had gone. We went back outside so the kids could play. One reporter straggled. Adam (and his friends) have garage sales everyday, pretty much just selling each other their junk. The reporter who had stayed walked to their sale, and gave them $5 for a marble (instead of the 10 cents they had asked... so sweet!). While they were splitting the money up, she came over and asked me my reaction to the crime as a young mother.

It had been a really busy, crazy day, in which Josh hadn't napped yet. So, I hadn't showered. My hair was in a messy bun. Grace had just wiped yogurt on me. I said something dumb about the crime in the hood and how it worried me, while Josh grabbed at her microphone.

Unfortunately, they like to put pictures of gross moms who only get 4 hours of sleep a night and mutter un-intelligible responses on the news, for the human-interest factor. So, Josh and I made the 11:00 news.

There will not be a link given here.

Because I look that bad.

But, Josh was on tv! Fun for him!

Mike and Adam were supposed to go on the Father and Son's campout. I asked them not to, because I was feeling a bit scared. ;) So, we all watched a Tinkerbell movie and had a Pinkalicious tea party together.

Adam didn't (apparently) get that "dress up" didn't mean Star Wars gear:

Josh, however, knows that sometimes getting a lick of frosting is worth wearing a dress for a few minutes:


Sigh... he would've been a cute girl. ;)



Yesterday was filled with so many emotions: sadness, fear, anger, happiness, embarrassment, joy, contentment.

Quite the rollercoaster.

Life is so fragile.

But, life is also so good.