This year, Advent and Christmas went by really fast. Although I felt I was gradually getting prepared through Advent, days after December 25th went by in a fly. But Christmas season this year had a grandiose finale on Epiphany. The three of us
went to the Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert on Sunday evening. I've been wanting to go to this concert for few years now, and I made sure to get the tickets on the first day they came out on sale. It was spectacular; 3 hours of great music, wowing light effects, lasers, and fire bursts! We had seats really high on the balcony, but it allowed us to see the full effect of the displays these effects made on the ceiling and the entire arena. I was pleasantly surprised that mom enjoyed it so much. :) She was clapping and rocking, and even had her favorite singer!
Another bombastic event that evening happened after we came back from the concert.
At about 11.45 PM, 15 min after we got back to the house, we got a loud knock on the front door - it was a police officer. 
His first words were "Did you just come back from the Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert"? My first thoughts: Did we do something on the road and he was following us; Did something happened at the concert and we were witnesses he chased down? Then he says: "I just called your cell phone, but you were not answering..." Wait, my cell phone?! Where did he get my cell phone number? Only a handful of my friends have that number.
At that point we invited him to come in, because this was going to take a while. :) He then explained that a neighbour who was jogging late that evening noticed that our front door was wide open, called the police, and he came over to check. I apparently forgot to lock the door after turning on the Christmas lights outside right before we left, and the wind must have opened it. He came in, went through all the rooms, checked all windows, and nothing was broken or appeared missing. Our laptop was sitting on the couch, very visible, and his conclusion was that since it has not been stolen - nobody was in the house trying to rob us. He then looked at phone number list on our home phone, dialed the first person on the list, who happened to be one of the only two of my friends who knew we were at the concert, Amanda. She gave him my cell number, (Thanks, Amanda!) but of course it was off. I am glad I didn't listen to that message right as we were driving back, because I would have been really worried. So, the nice policeman just locked the house and circled around the neighbourhood waiting for us to come back and tell us all that.
My mom felt uneasy after that incident, but I felt at peace. At peace that we have nice neighbours who would call the police when seeing an open house, more nice neighbours who didn't come in and took our stuff while the house was open, and nice police officers who went through the house to check it, thought to call someone from my phone list, and waited that late for us to come back. I love being a homeowner in a safe neigbourhood!
