Thankful for Good Friends

I would like to sincerely say thank you to our friends Shane and Adrienne Gary.  Last Wednesday while we were at the beach, I became engrossed in a book (Between Sundays by Karen Kingsbury; pretty predictable but I couldn't put it down).  I stayed up until 1:15 Thursday morning reading it because I wanted to get to the end.  As I was turning off all the lights and getting ready to head to bed, Ryan came out of our room holding his cell phone and said "that was the alarm company; our burglar alarm has gone off, and they have dispatched the police."  Let me just tell you, that is not a good feeling.  We waited a few minutes to hear back from them to see what was going on.  We tried calling our neighbors, the Mayos, to see if they could tell us anything (it went to voicemail).  After about 20 minutes, Ryan called the Smyrna non-emergency line, and they confirmed a policeman had confirmed the perimeter of the house was secure, and it appeared all was alright.  This was such a relief; Mom and Dad had a squirrel chew through a wire while they lived there, so we assumed it was the same thing.

We were heading back to bed when a few minutes later, Ryan's cell rang again; the alarm had gone off a second time and police were being dispatched again.  We didn't know what was going on.  This time, they gave us the officer's cell number, so Ryan called, and they talked through a few things.  Again though, it appeared everything was alright.  As we were lying in bed a few minutes later though, and we received a call that the alarm had gone for a THIRD time, we knew something needed to be done; our neighbors were going to hate us!  We asked the alarm company to set it to test mode so it wouldn't call us or the police every time it went off (and by this point, we were sure it would go off again).  The alarm company also told us the alarm was being triggered by something inside our house; it was not a perimeter alarm.

After a quick debate, Ryan called Shane because he knew that Shane slept with his cell phone on and near him.  Sure enough, he answered, Ryan immediately apologized and explained the situation to him.  Shane graciously agreed to go over and see for us what was going on; keep in mind, he lives about 25 minutes away from us and at this point, it was about 2:30 in the morning.  Because their kids are in Florida visiting their grandparents this week and to keep him company, Adrienne agreed to go with him. 

They drove over, Ryan explained how to get inside, they found the culprit: the balloons we got to welcome Ryan home from Alaska the week before had been left on the kitchen counter, and as they ran out of helium, they dropped down in front of the beam...whoops.  They assured us that all was fine.  And they did it without hesitation or making us feel any more guilty than we already did.  We cannot fully express our gratitude to them.  Shane and Adrienne are already an amazing couple for many, many reasons, but this is just a quick example of why we are so thankful for them.