We've become a statistic....

....of credit card fraud. Last night before bed, I decided to peek online to check the balances on our bank accounts (I do this periodically, as I'm sure you all do, just to make sure that all is well.) Out of pure curiosity, I decided to look at out MasterCard to see how many points we've accumulated over recent months. And that's when I found it.....two charges on our card for a online department store back east for items totaling close to $3000. Yikes! My heart went into overdrive! We are not ones to wrack up charges on our credit cards. If fact, we pride ourselves on trying to stay debt-free in that area, so when I saw those transactions, I knew they were not ours. I called for Ty to join me in the office and together we immediately got on the phone with our credit card company. Mind you, it was nearly 10pm, so I was relieved to actually get to talk to someone. Apparently, in addition to the two charges made in the last two days, there was a third charge that was attempted yesterday morning for another $2800 at Bed, Bath and Beyond. That one was actually flagged as fraud and declined. Guess someone was in the mood for a remodel or something, and they wanted US to pay for it. Jerks!! Man! I cannot tell you how freaked out I am by all this!!! We are SUPER careful...or as careful as we know to be...when it comes to our credit cards and such. But somehow some jerk has gotten ahold of our information. I just pray, pray, pray that it is just our credit card and not our identity. It was too late last night once we finally finished our phone calls with the credit card company to check our credit reports, but that will definitely be on the list for today. As for now, there is a block on our card and we'll have to talk to the fraud department on Monday regarding the charges that have already made it through. Sheesh.

Needless to say, this morning, Ty and I both feel the need to 'lock down'. I'm guessing we will spend some time today going through and changing passwords, checking our credit and making absolutely certain that we are as safe as we can be. Along those lines, I wanted to give you guys a heads up that my blog is probably going to change too. Maybe the whole web address, or maybe it will remain the same with the site now turning to an invite only kind of thing. I have yet to decide. But the ironic thing of it all is that yesterday morning, when I was up early with Ellie and couldn't return to sleep..before all this happened....I was randomly thinking about how I need to remove our last name from our blog, for safety reasons. I guess that God was putting a hint of all this on my heart. That's how I came to change my 'look' yesterday. I was actually online to see about how to make some security changes. And I guess that is probably why I 'randomly' looked at our credit card last night too. Normally, we wouldn't have a need to check our balance or anything until it was time to pay bills, which isn't for a few more weeks. And who knows what could have happened in that amount of time!!! I hate that there are creeps in this world who will abuse us in that way.

So, what I will ask of you all at this point, is that if you would like to be added to our blog invite list (if that is the direction we decide to go), please send me an email to kmclaughlin25@yahoo.com. I really hate to have to do it this way, since I know that there are some out there who peek in on us because they are friends of friends or whatever, but unless I can figure out a different way to do all this, an invite-only blog is going to have to be the way I go. :(

On a much more positive note, today has already started off so beautifully! I just have to say that my sweet husband is such an awesome Daddy too!! This morning, he set his alarm early (after a long week of getting up before dawn for work AND being sick with a cold) and woke Luke up before the sunrise in order that he could spend some special one on one time with him. He got Luke dressed, bundled him up in his beanie and coat and took him out to pick up doughnuts and watch the sunrise together. They came home a few minutes ago with a special breakfast treat for me and the biggest smiles I'd seen! I could just see the love written all over Luke's face and how special he felt to join Daddy on a little early morning adventure. And that, to me, is priceless!