We interrupt this vacation...

...to file a police report. 😠

Our first vacation sleep was spent in Jackson, Missouri. We stayed at the Drury Inn & Suites where Tim and I had our wedding reception almost exactly 13 years ago. 💓 The plan was for Tim to spend Monday fishing with his friend, Aaron, while the kids and I relaxed at the hotel and swam in the pool.

Tim woke up early to meet Aaron, but he promptly returned to our room in search of his tackle box. Initially, he thought that Mallory or I had brought it up to the room. Neither of us remembered hauling it upstairs, so I offered to go down and check the car, too.

I looked through the car, but I didn't find it either. I noticed that Tim had even lifted the seats in the third row; however, I would find out later that Tim hadn't actually done that. My thought process was that we knocked it out of the car when we were pulling out luggage, so surely someone turned it in at the desk. Nope. The desk did not have any items turned in from the parking lot.

I went back to the car where I realized that Isaiah's metal detector was also missing. Why would Tim be taking that fishing? It was at this point that we starting putting the pieces together. Someone had broken into our car.

As you can see, they were rather thorough. Besides lifting up and looking under the third row of seats, they pulled everything out from under the other seats, too.

It seems they used something to pry open the door and pop the lock. Jerk. Nissan's later estimate was around $2100 in damage to the car.

A big thank you to Deputy Cheney at the Cape Girardeau County Sherriff's Department. He was super helpful - even though we'll never get our stuff back.

We were very disappointed with the staff at the hotel. The manager was not very helpful or apologetic at all. He was suddenly "busy" or "not at the desk" when the deputy asked to talk with him about another hotel guest that I mentioned seeing wander around the parking lot after 10:00 the previous night.

We lost our Garmin GPS, Isaiah's metal detector, Tim's full tackle box, a Sony bluetooth speaker that Tim brought along to give me for our anniversary, 2 Brewers baseball caps, and a credit card. We realize that it is just stuff, and stuff is replaceable. But it was our stuff, and we work hard for our stuff. Nothing takes away that feeling of being vulnerable and violated. That being said, it could always be worse. We are extremely safely to all be safe. We did learn to take everything into a hotel, though, even if we are only staying for one night.

~ becky