# 4 February Vacation

February vacation came and I did allow my daughter to go to a friend's house for a couple of days.  I felt very comfortable with where she was going and we needed a break from each other.  She stayed there two days and then her friend came to our house for a couple of days.  They did go back to her house at the end of the week.  On Friday, I went into town to upgrade our cell phone family plan.  My daughter conveniently left her cell phone at home and I took it with me to trade it in for a new one.  She locked her phone so I couldn't transfer her contact information into her new phone.  I called her friend's house and asked to talk to my daughter, she hesitated and said my daughter was in the shower.  I said "that is fine, just yell through the door and ask her what her unlock code is for her phone."  She asked if she could call me back.  I waited ten minutes and I called back.  In the meantime, the tech dept was able to unlock the phone and transfer her pictures and contacts.  I get my daughter's friend on the phone again and asked where my daughter was.  The friend tried to tell me she was in the shower still.  I got irritated and said, "Is she really there?"  Her friend hesitated and I said, "Where is she, is she with her boyfriend?"  The friend said well...  I said "Thank you, I will take it from here".  I still had the boyfriend's number and I called him.  I asked where my daughter was.  He tried to tell me he was at a friend's house and my daughter was at his house.  I told him, go get her and get her back to her friend's house.  "Tell my daughter I will be there in an hour to pick her up".  I got to the friends' house and her mother was home.  She was telling her daughter how disappointed she was that her daughter tried to lie to me.  Her daughter was subsequently grounded as well as my daughter.  Our ride home was very loud and she demanded that she was not going to be grounded again.  She said, "I only went to my boyfriend's house for a few minutes, he wanted to talk to me".  I said, "he could have talked to you in your friend's yard".  "Mom you don't understand, I was only going to be gone for a few minutes".  I told her she should have called and asked me first.  She said, "I will the next time".  I said, "there won't be a next time".  Things were tense for the rest of the day. 

Saturday came and all was quiet.  The morning had come and gone and about mid-afternoon I caught my daughter putting the house phone back in its' holder.  I told her she was not allowed to use the phone, she needed to ask me.  She said, she needed to call her friend as they had a project due the beginning of the week and she wanted to get some information about it.  She then informed me that she needed to use the computer to do some research.  I sat for a while and watched what she was doing and then decided to go work on a project upstairs.  I took the house phone with me.  I knew she was up to something and making plans.  I decided the only way I was going to have any chance of finding out what was going on was if she used IM and talked to her friends.  Unfortunately for me, she had made the plans when she was on the phone earlier and I did not find out anything in particular was happening that night.  About 9:00 pm, my younger daughter was at the computer and said Mom I heard something outside.  We looked outside and didn't see anything.  I figured the wind knocked something over as the noise did not bother the dog.  The dog hears everything.  My older daughter came downstairs a few moments later and said she was heading to bed soon.  We said goodnight.  I stayed up until 11:00 to make sure my daughter didn't try anything.  I went to bed and laid awake for an hour waiting for my daughter to sneak out.  I went out into the hall a few times to check.  Her door was closed and the lights were off.  The next morning I got up and went up to my friend's house to take our daily walk.  I got home around 9:30.  My younger daughter met me in the garage and proceeded to tell me that my older daughter had just gotten home about 10 minutes earlier.  I asked her if she was sure.  She said she was up in bed and heard a loud truck and it sounded like it was in the yard.  She got up and looked out her window.  She saw her sister get out of the truck and wave goodbye.  She said her sister came in the house, told her not to tell Mom and went out onto the front porch to have a cigarette. 

The noise my younger daughter heard the night before was my older daughter dropping something out the window.  She was making sure we either didn't hear it or that it was not loud enough to make a fuss over.  When she said goodnight, she was getting ready to leave for the night.  She snuck out her window onto the garage roof and then jumped.  My daughter was determined that she was not going to miss a party and she didn't.