While we were in Sao Paulo this summer, and still exhausted and stressed from all of our traveling mishaps, we received a call about 11:00 pm Sunday night from our next door neighbor. He called to see if we had come home, because he saw an window open at our house. My heart immediately sank and I began to worry. That could only mean one thing. Someone had broken in to our house.
It is necessary here to take precautions when leaving your house empty, as they are easy targets for thieves who watch the activity in the neighborhood. We had some lights on timers, and had someone coming by every couple of days to get the mail and check on things. We had done what we could to secure the house while we were away.
It was an unnerving feeling to know that someone had been in my house and looking through my things, but we discovered that the only thing they took was some cash that we had in a drawer (mostly birthday and Christmas money that the boys were saving), and they also emptied the boys' piggy banks. They had looked through closets and drawers, but passed over laptops, electronics, and other valuable things. They even left a few American dollars that we had! It could have been so much worse and we are just very thankful that it wasn't.
When we arrived home and looked around we became even more convinced that it was just kids who had broken in. There was food from the refrigerator in the boys' bedroom, and some of Josiah's clothes were left in the living room, as if they were going to take them, but didn't. We also saw where they had climbed in the bathroom window, which is not very big at all.
A few days after we were home, we left for a few hours to run some errands, and when we got home, we discovered the step ladder under the bathroom window again, and as if they had tried to get in, but didn't. It was evident that we had to do something to prevent this from happening again.
We already have a wall around our property with an electric fence on top of the wall, but the fence was broken in several places and not hooked up. We hadn't repaired it before because we are just renting and we hadn't felt it was necessary. Now we know it is.
It took the guys about a day and a half to get the fence up and running.
This should prevent anyone from climbing over our wall. We are also
looking around for a kid-friendly watch dog who could deter any would-be
thieves from trying to get in. We don't want to be paranoid, but we do
want to be smart and feel safe in our home.
Good balance must be a requirement to work at this company!
