Very sad news about our cabin ....

In short... we were robbed at our cabin.  :(

Two weeks ago, Mike went to the cabin to do more work.  He arrived early early in the morning, and noticed our beautiful wrought iron was half laying down on the ground.  (no pictures.. Mike lost his camera too).  The fence was held together by someone else's lock (they removed our lock), and somehow... pulled one side of the fence in the direction it's not supposed to go (it only goes in one direction) so it bent/twisted the hinges on one side, and broke.  We're still not certain how they did it, but we're thinking they possibly lost the key to their lock?

Anyways, he drove up to the cabin, and the door was standing wide open.  The robbers cut the power to the place, so everything was dark.  Two puppies came out of the house when they arrived.  :(  It was very very cold, and one of the pups had ribs showing through its skin. They were sleeping on the bathroom rug to stay warm.  Mike stated that the ice cubes were still frozen, so the robbery must have just taken place.  Plus, the pups didn't leave any feces or urine spots anywhere on the carpet/wood in the cabin, so they weren't in there long either. (the puppies slept outside under the house that night, and followed Mike to our neighbors house who had food to feed them ... they stayed on this neighbors house the entire weekend after that.)

In short... they took everything (our leather couch, comfy leather chair with an ottoman), all of our kitchen stuff, all of the food in the fridge (except the Coke Zero.. they didn't take that), in the freezer, and the rest of the food that was not in the fridge.  Took our plates, our dishes, pans, silverware.  Spices, DVD player ... everything.

Took all the clothes we left there (girls jackets for hunting, Mike's hunting clothes, Mike's jeans & shirts he left there), laundry detergent.  They took small tools he had there, our friends hunting gear he left there.  They took our brand new Crock pot we hadn't even taken out of the package. Gone.  Stolen.

They took some blankets off of the bed on our loft, but thankfully, left the beds.  They did leave all the appliances, so that was a blessing.  We were thinking they probably would come back for the appliances.  They took our brand new grill we had (it went on the picnic table outside).. GRR!  Mike was given my grandpa's bow, and he left it there to use at the cabin when he went hunting w/ a bow.  Gone.  :(

Outside the cabin, they took the riding lawnmower, all the stuff we stored in our popup camper (TV/DVD player, Bug Zapper ... I'm going to miss that like crazy b/c mosquitoes are so bad out there! and other little odds & ends Mike had out there to finish the cabin).

They took the ladder that we climbed to get onto our loft. 

So ... we were robbed.  Badly.  Jerks (that's just the mild version of the name I orginally called them).

They tried to take Mike's trailer.  Mike realized that we were robbed at least twice.  Once when they rolled the lawnmower out around the fence, and probably unloaded all the outside stuff.  Then another time at least, to open the door and grab.

However.. they did leave a very important piece of evidence.  A little kids Little League shirt with initials in the tag.  The police did snap that picture and bagged it for evidence.

SO... Mike spent that weekend ensuring the house was double protected... enhancing the locks, the frames around the door, putting up plywood around the windows when we're gone, so it would make it SO much harder to get inside.  He placed cameras all around the property, in hopes we'll see if anyone has been there.  Someone even tried to drive through to our property from our power line -- and ran over our dead pine tree.  So, we need to put in concrete pillars in that section.  Great.

People suck.  Then we also found out the storage unit place where we have been keeping our extras (like our four wheelers.. which we have since brought home), has been having break ins as well.  Double GREAT.  (at this time of writing, I'm not sure if we were broken into or not, but Mike just went up there and had to go there first to get a ladder, and he said "all is well", so I'm assuming we didn't get broken into).

Unfortunately, our neighbor across the street who also beefed up his place when he heard about our robbery ... was robbed after we were.  Thankfully they did not get into his place, but they did do damage, and took all his cameras that he had around his property.

Again.. people suck.

A week after this happened, I came to work on a Monday.  Someone stole my owl picture from my wall.  I had three pictures printed that I took of the owls that were outside our house in June.... one of them is gone.  SERIOUSLY people?!!  Argh!

That's the update.  Now begins the process of getting ADT, replacing all the stolen items (little by little.. have to search garage sales for stuff now) -- and mending my "I no longer trust people" feelings.  Ugh.