Our Night in Delaware

I have to pause in my posting about our trip to share about our experience in Delaware.

First of all, I have to say that I have always wanted to visit the northeast part of the country. Our trip to New York did not work out due to time and money constraints. We decided it would not be worth the headache of hustling both the kids around the city and not having a plan or the funds to do an official tour in the short amount of time we had, so the plan was to come home through Delaware and Maryland and see some of the sights of those states since we had never been. (well Corey has been through all those states to Maine, but the rest of us had not)

ANYWAY. We left out of King of Prussia around 7pm and drove the short 30 miles to Wilmington, DE. I had researched and found a great rate on a hotel there, found some cool things to see the next morning, etc. We were tired of looking at the four walls of our hotel room in King of Prussia and decided to look at another set of walls for that night instead, ha.

None of the shops in downtown Wilmington were open, as it was a Sunday night. We checked into the hotel, went out for a quick dinner, then back to the room.

I would just like to say that when we walked into the place, I felt....something. Truthfully, I rarely get that feeling but I chalked it up to too much sugar and caffeine. This or that person looked shady or creepy. Someone out on the sidewalk looked suspicious. Some of you may know I tend to think things like that anyway, but truthfully...this place looked very nice and well kept...beautifully decorated..but I just felt weird.
We went to the room and started getting settled. Called for extra bedding for the fold out. I was giving baths while Corey got the bed ready. He came to show me the sheets.
There were two tiny blood spots on them. UGH.

Okay...well.... what to do? Some of you probably would have left immediately. Those of you who have ever unloaded over a week's worth of luggage in a hotel room not on the first floor with two kids already in pajamas would have given it another chance. We did. Used a different sheet and then checked out the main bed.

Ugh. I can't even write on here what we speculate was on those sheets.
Corey said, "Okay, we are leaving, start packing things up and I will get a cart."

Seconds after the door shut behind him I started hearing blood curdling screams from the room next door.
Shouting. Yelling. Cursing. Horrific words and SCREAMING AT THE TOP OF THEIR LUNGS.
A seriously violent domestic dispute. Horror movie sounds.
I think that God must have shut the ears of our innocent children because they went about their play while I with trembling and as fast as possible moving hands packed up the rest of our things. There is no other reason why they shouldn't have heard. It was so loud and right against our room wall. It was.... truly frightening, as in, it is about to bust through that wall and hurt us all frightening. Someone is about to shoot you or someone else frightening.

I cannot convey in typed words how haunting and terrifying the sounds were that came through those walls. I started praying for the person in that room that was bearing the brunt of that indescribable abuse. I didn't know what else to do. I prayed for us...that we would get out before it spilled out of that room into the rest of the hotel. In completely and total honesty... I was scared for our lives if that person came out into the hallway looking for another outlet. It was horrid. It was real.

Corey came back into the room with the cart. Katie and Noah asked why we were in such a rush. We told them that they had to be absolutely quiet in the hallway and to walk quickly and silently with us. If that man came out the door and something bothered him in the least...like a child singing or talking...I shudder to think of it.
At no other point in my life have I ever felt like just running out with the clothes on my back. We loaded the cart and headed a different way that we thought would take us to the elevator but it was a dead end. We went back to the elevator and waited... I was shaking so badly and my heart was beating so hard. The yelling and screaming and shouting went on and on and on and on and on...it did not cease. At one point it sounded like the door was opening and I thought I was going to throw up right then and there but it didn't. Somewhere on the floor a baby was crying this entire time as well. We are not sure if it was in the same room or not, but we prayed it was not.

We walked quickly and quietly through the very nice lobby past the very nice desk clerk who was checking in another couple that reminded me very much of Pretty Woman, if you catch my meaning.

The desk clerk, whom Corey had talked to a short while and was very friendly, followed us outside to where we had parked RIGHT IN FRONT of the door because he allowed us to when we checked in. Corey then told him what was happening upstairs.

I have never felt such relief as when we had our children in the car with the doors closed and when Corey was sitting in the driver's seat beside me.
We were so thankful to have not had to come in contact with the THING that was in the next room. The timing of everything worked out so well and as we drove to Virginia at 11pm, we were at a loss as to the reason we had been there to begin with.

We could have stayed in our room in King of Prussia and just driven to Delaware the next day. We could have chosen a different hotel. The place wasn't a bad motel. It wasn't a no-name roach coach. It looked nice, the price was moderate and the clerk seemed friendly. But there was just something off about it. Corey had left the room to take the cart back the first time and had gotten in a conversation with the desk clerk. He was gone a longer time than normal and I completely panicked. No reason that I knew of. But I totally panicked. There was something in me that was on edge from the moment we checked in.

We concluded that the reason we were there was to speak up. Corey told what was happening and hopefully the clerk did something about it. Perhaps we should have called the police, but we were so shook up by the whole thing....we could barely catch our breath or think coherently.
I was literally sick afterward. I could do nothing but shake and cry. I was shaking from the anxiety of trying to get out of there with our kids safely. I was crying because what I had just heard was a brutal run in with things I have thankfully never personally heard or known firsthand in my lifetime. I was crying because we could not tell for sure where that baby was that was also crying. I was shaking and crying because we were there and unable to stop it. All we could do was tell someone.
We nervously recounted the events. What he heard. When Corey heard the noise start (as the elevator doors were closing on his way down to get the cart to load up). What we may have forgotten to grab out of the room as we ran out. How we could have done things differently, or what ifs...

We were going to just go to another nearby hotel, but there was no chance of sleep so we drove. We drove as far as we could reasonably go and still get our money's worth of another room. The kids slept. They never knew what happened. In the car they asked why we were in such a hurry and we just told them it was because it was so late we need to hurry to find another place because that one was dirty.
The went to sleep. Peacefully and trustingly.

That's why we woke up in Virginia Monday morning instead of Delaware. I will never forget hearing those sounds of emotional and physical abuse. I will never stop being thankful for the life I have and the life my kids have. I will never stop being thankful that we were gone before whatever else happened that night. I will never forget my first visit to Delaware.

This is the only photo I took in Delaware...as we were driving into Wilmington.
I just noticed the motto on the bottom of the sign. It says: "A place to be somebody"
.... hmmmmmm.