Locked out!

This incident happened a little over a month ago but I still wanted to blog about it because I still can't believe it happened. Hunter was at school and Tyler & Brody were in the family room playing with some toys. I ran downstairs to throw some laundry in (usually takes less than five minutes so I usually sneak away before anyone even knows I'm gone). This time one of the boys (I suspect Tyler but I can't really blame him because I didn't see it happen) walked over to the kitchen door that separates the basement stairs and back door and locked me out! The door was already closed because I always close it so they can't walk up and down those stairs by themselves so all he needed to do was turn the deadbolt. Little stinker! I could get outside and had access to the basement but I couldn't get back into the rest of the house. I called both boys over to see if they could unlock it for me and could hear them trying but they were unsuccessful. I left the house and started knocking on doors. Nobody was answering (it was the middle of the day on a weekday). The fourth house I tried was Dick's. He's like 80 years old and (obviously) doesn't work anymore. He lives kitty corner from us. I asked to borrow his phone to call around. I called my brother Mark because I thought he might have a key. No answer. I called my friend Shelly, who is also our realtor, to get to the code to the lock box on our front door (which has a key in it) but no answer. I called John at work to see if he knew the code. He didn't and started panicking. He suggested I call Joan (the owner of the real estate company Shelly works for). I said, "I don't have their number. Would you look it up for me?" Then felt really stupid when he told me to just look on the sign in our yard! I called Joan and she knew it right away and one minute later I was in. I was gone for probably 20 minutes total and it was evident that the boys had their own little baby party while I was away. Woo hoo!!! Mom's gone!!! They had climbed up on their high chairs to get up on top of the buffet to get a box of Cheerios down and proceeded to whip the box all over the floor. They dumped their entire laundry basket of toys all over the floor. They got into some of my potted plants in the kitchen and dumped dirt all over the floor. They also got into a container of monitor wipes and pulled every single one out and distributed them all over the living room floor. I took this picture only after I had cleaned half of it up (the thought hadn't occurred to me to take one right away). You can't see it in this small picture but there are Cheerios all over the hardwood floor. Thankfully everyone was safe and unharmed.