The Life and Times of Alann

Before we went to bed the night I discovered the BB gun range I also noticed that things in my bedroom closet had been rearranged. Nothing special, a blanket I threw in there was folded and some stuff was moved on the floor to one side. I then in the morning I noticed that the 2 guitars for guitar hero we keep in the closet were missing. I then went into (and this is important to notice the locations) the front entry closet where we kept the drums and peddle and noticed they were also gone. Finally I went over to the front room, which is right off the entry, and looked at the PS2 in the entertainment center and found that the microphone, guitar decals and 3 guitar hero games (1 never opened) were also gone. Odd. How come they borrowed the game and forgot to tell us? We don't mind if they play it or take it home to borrow, but it is only polite to ask first.

So now we are kind of upset because of the damage to our stuff and lack of courtesy when borrowing things. But Janet has always been really great so we send her a text and say "can you bring back guitar hero and anything else you borrowed?" We soon get a reply that says "Yes". Well good everything seems to be working out. We will talk to her about the BB gun damage when she comes over to drop things off and get her pay and we'll deduct the damage from her pay and move on with life. WRONG.

Around 4 or 5 we are dealing with the kids, Alex is eating and Claire is whining about something, so we are a little distracted. Then suddenly there is a knock on the door and there is this guy there that i have never seen before and he starts to make moves to come in.

(Most of this will be paraphrasing) I'm like hi, who are you? He says "oh, I'm Ben I'm Janet's husband. (O.K. where is she?) I came over to drop off these keys and this bottle of car paint touch up we accidentally took off your dresser (Which BTW I swear was still in its packaging when we left). Janet is at work."

Me: Oh o.k. so where is Guitar hero?
Ben: We don't know, we don't have it. We only have ours.
Ben: We thought that it was strange you asked for it back. Are you going to rent the house to us for the (hugely) discounted rate?

Of course at this point I am completely dumbfounded by what her not coming over in person and the denial of having our gaming gear and all I can think to say is, "Uuu, we just got back from vacation so you'll have to let us talk about it first."
Ben: Oh o.k well I'll see you later.

So i then rush into the backroom where Becca is feeding Alex and say "They stole Guitar Hero from us! You need to get Janet over here now so we can talk to her alone about this!"

So Becca texts her and Janet says she can't make it over here till 10am the next day because she works nights. So now I am really upset and paranoid. What else is gone? So the search starts. I said "what else could they have stolen that would be worth taking?"

This little side note is important for the rest of the story. We try to work with cash and not credit so that we don't build up any extra credit debt by being lazy with our spending. So Becca will tell me how much she needs for the month and then cash out parts of it for spending through out the month. She does this by putting the money in different envelopes labeled for their use and using them when she does purchases.

Suddenly Becca realizes that she has left some of our bill money envelopes in a black binder on the counter, which has been mysteriously cleaned and rearranged. Over $500 in CASH is missing from all the different envelopes and from around the house!!!! We start dialing Janet's phone number right then and there telling here she needs to be over here ASAP! We don't mention what is going on, just that she needs to get here now.

By now we have been talking about who could have done this and talked to the neighbors about what they have seen and only Janet and Ben have been seen coming and going from the house and because of Becca's past relationship with Janet we think that Ben has been taking things without her knowing. So by not telling her what we want to talk about we don't give him the chance to make up any lies if she talks to him before coming over. Finally she is scared enough and agrees to come over at 8 am instead of 10.

Well we have all night till Janet get to our house. So what do you think we do? Agonize and talk about what we have to do next and what are our legal choices. While talking about it I go back to the front closet and open it to look in it again to see if they actually got the drum peddle because it was separate from the drum set. Then i notice my leather jacket Becca gave me for my birthday 2 yrs ago is missing. The special hanger is there and so is the scarf I wear with it but the jacket is missing. He stole my jacket too! By now I am livid and ready to go over to his parents house (where they have been living for the first 2 weeks of their marriage) and settle things right now.

But, the hope is that Janet can help us get our stuff back. So I stay home and start looking again for what else could be missing. 2 other things end up missing (so far) a small Bayonet knife I keep in my nightstand and a *yellow RC car with track for wheels* from my closet. (notice its all my stuff going missing). So after doing some research, because I can't sleep, I find out that over $1,000 has been taken from us and that if found guilty the responsible person could be charged with a 3rd degree felony and have to pay $5000 and/or up to 5yrs in jail.

Thus started a very sleepless night and the beginning of the "confronting story" in which the, as my wife says, "Scary, how dare you do this in my house, protective, I will consume your soul" Alann comes out.

We went to California to visit my parents along with the rest of my siblings and their families Aug 20-24 2010 and because we have pets and are trying to rent/sell the house we needed to have a house sitter. We choose a young woman from the stake, we'll call her "Janet", who we had used before to babysit and house sit before. Right before Janet was to watch the house she did a surprise early wedding to her now husband "Ben". We had never met Ben before but with Janet being such an upstanding young women and her now being married we allowed her to bring Ben over to the house. We also were thinking of renting the house to the couple at a discount because they are LDS and said they would take great care of it. Things with the vacation went great and we were happy to get home when the time came.

When we walked in the door the house was spotless and had a nice pleasant smell to it. We also discovered that some stains in the carpet had been removed and that lots of little nice extra things had been done to the house. The first odd thing i noticed was that the evaporator cooler was running but that the belt had slipped off the pulley and that the blades were not turning even it the motor was, so I turned it off. Then Becca notice a "ball bearing" on the floor, which was later determined to be a BB. On the way to the back I saw a paint can lid with a bunch of what appeared to be drilled holes sitting in the recycling bin in the kitchen. Why did they do that?

After that I went into the laundry room and found the light bulb missing from the ceiling fixture in the garage and had to walk through the garage in the dark to let the dogs out. On the way I found a pair of locking pliers holding a long shafted flat head screw driver just laying on my tool bench while a ratchet set was knocked over the back of the bench and wedge behind the wall. Odd, what were they doing?

I opened the door to the backyard and looked to my left and noticed that some small 2'x 4'closet doors we were working on had been moved outside and that some pots that had been stacked were also moved. After some quick investigation I found that someone had set up a BB gun range in our backyard and had shot our watering can, closet doors, and that paint lid. Not only that but they had missed sometimes and put 3 holes in the siding on the house. They had also taken the only light bulb in the garage out to use in some of my spot lights so they could light up the target area and then never put it or the spot lights back in their places.

We have now realized that the "ball bearing" in the house was a BB and that the pliers and screw driver tool were used to pry a BB out in our office were they shot the wall! These are the guys that are supposed to take better care of our place than another person off the street and for a discounted rent?!?! What else have they done to the house that we haven't found yet?

So far this only covers the damage they have done to the house (that we know of) I haven't even started to talk about the other odd things around the house that finally lead us to know that some major theft had happened. But for now, like after I discovered the firing range in our back yard, it is late and I will tell more of the story later after I get some stuff done and get some sleep. Oh i should mention that this story will probably be in 4 parts/days, Damage, Theft, Confronting, and Results

O.k. so i unintentionally lied I will not tell more about our theft story today. I spent 5 hrs out in the hot sun cleaning up the dog damage, trash and mowing so that the backyard would look somewhat respectable for viewers. So I am sun burnt and sun drained and will attempt to tell our theft story tomorrow.

So after a long time of not writing due to school I have finally graduated and can now spend some time writing on the blog each week. I am completely exhausted because of an incident we had with our house sitter. To keep a long story short we had a house sitter's husband or (very unlikely) friend steal and damage $1000 of cash and property. So I was up all night worrying about the situation and this was after barely getting over a late night drive from Ca to Kearns. I've been posting little bits and pieces of the progression on facebook and will do a bigger post on it later but for now I just wanted to write a little something after such a long absence.