Caution: Dangerous Party Favor

About a month ago, Cooper attended a birthday party for one of his little friends. In his goodie bag was a small, light-weight plastic ball that was covered in tiny suction cups. The day after the party he was demonstrating how the ball worked on flat surfaces to some friends that we had over for dinner. We were in the kitchen and Coop was standing in the family room off the kitchen. He threw the ball at the family room window to show how it sticks. Except that it didn't stick. And the window cracked. What's scary is that when he did it, though we weren't watching him, we didn't HEAR anything suspicious...just the thud of the ball hitting the window. We didn't hear it crack. The kids were pretty stunned and the visiting couple was relieved to discover that it wasn't any of their kids that broke the window.

I just stood there and looked at it. Then I said "Oh well." My friend was pretty surprised at my reaction. That's when I told her we were replacing that window and a few others before the end of the year anyway. (We've already replaced the windows in the bedrooms/bathrooms on the south end of the house as well as the big front picture window. We were planning on starting the second phase of replacement in the fall to complete the project.)

Ironically, this particular window has caused nightmares for me on more than one occasion. I've dreamt that evil people have broken into our house at night through that very window. It's the furthest from the bedrooms and the easiest one to access on that end of the house from outside without a ladder. I've worried because if those evil people with evil designs broke the glass, surely we wouldn't be able to hear it. My fears were confirmed when the glass was broken within feet of us and no one heard it break or crack. It was that brittle and thin.

Our small table sits right in front of that window. A few days after Cooper cracked the glass, Karcyn climbed up on the chair nearest the break and pushed on it. She successfully pushed a large shard of glass outside to the grass below and somehow managed to NOT cut herself! So now we have a hole in the side of our house. We thought we could get along through the summer with the crack before replacing the window, but with the hole, we knew that wouldn't be as easy. I didn't want to replace the window with a quick fix (that would still cost money) if we were just replacing the rest of them within 6 months anyway. I called Sears to see if we could replace only the one window and not all five remaining windows we have still to do. They said they could and would, but there is a minimum charge for the crew to come out so if the charge is more than the cost of the window, they suggested doing two windows instead of the one. So that's what we're doing on Tuesday. It's definitely sooner than we had planned, even just replacing the family room window and our kitchen window. But surely this is a blessing in disguise. 1) The windows will actually help keep heat out of the house, so there's a plus right there (with no A/C) as summer is beginning here in the northwest--apparently we're supposed to hit 100 degrees this weekend. 2) My house will be more secure and hopefully my nightmares regarding this weakness will stop. 3) And if nothing else, should there ever be more party favors (or baseballs or light sabers...) that go hurling through the air and collide with the window, Sears will replace it for free.