Oh Passat...

Sunday: Leave car lights on for a couple hours (accidentally of course..). Check to see if car will start and it does! 
Monday: Get in car to go to the store and when I turn the key, the dash lights go blinky-bazurk and car will not even attempt to turn-over. We jump it with Ryan's car later to see if that will work and it does! We drive it around the block and are satisfied with our results.
Tuesday: Get in car to go to the store (because Monday's attempt failed) and car is more dead now than ever. Won't even show the dash lights.
Wednesday: John (our new mechanic who is just like Rabbit in NC but he won't let us call him Rabbit) comes over, determines it is the alternator so we buy a new alternator. He installs it. Car starts.
Thursday morning: I have a Mary Kay appointment at 10am. I go to start my car and you could hear crickets chirping it was so quiet and dead. Thankfully, my uncle-in-law Evan who is in town rescued me by letting me borrow Grandma D's car to do my appointment - I was about 25 minutes late....
Thursday evening: We go buy a new battery. We had the old one tested and it was toast.
Friday: Get in car to go to the store (because Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday's attempts were thwarted) and the car starts!

So that's where we are now. Lots of time, patience, irritation, and money later, I think the car is working now. John's theory is that my battery and alternator were ready to go at any moment so leaving my lights on for that couple of hours just expedited the fun. Then, the strain on the battery over the coarse of the week from having a faulty alternator ultimately crap-fried the battery so it all needed to be replaced.