LESSON LEARNED

We have friends who are going through a very difficult time with one of their kids. They live across the street from us so I grabbed some of their laundry and brought it home to do. Rob was out of town and when he got back, we wanted to just stop over to give them hugs and give them their clean laundry. We put the kids in bed and waited about an hour to make sure they were asleep. We brought the dogs in and locked all the doors.

Well, our stop-by turned into being invited in and we ended up staying about 40 minutes. Several times, Rob got up and opened the front door just to make sure everything was alright. As we were walking home, we talked about how awful it would be if the kids had woken up. As we approached our driveway, the garage door began to open and we saw three sets of bare feet, and then terrified faces accompanied by loud crying. It was the worst feeling, quickly putting together in our minds that they must have woken up and were looking for us, so scared. It went from bad to worse when Gage told us that they had searched all over for us and were walking to the Johansson's house because he had called 9-1-1 and noone answered. I ran in the house and grabbed the nearest phone and hit redial to see how much time we had before they came to take our children away. Huge relief came when I saw 9-9-1-1. They thought someone had taken us and we were never coming back.

Bella was the first to wake up and when she couldn't find us, she woke up Gage and Paisley. I can just imagine how awful they felt going from room to room and calling out for us.

Gage was the real hero. I am so impressed at how he was taking care of his sisters and the situation. He first tried calling for help and when that didn't work he was going to walk himself and his sisters down to the neighbor's house for help. We praised him for all of this and apologized to all of them profusely. We are still paying the price for that. Every night, one or all of them will yell out, "Mom! Dad!" from their beds about 15 minutes after going to bed. When we answer they say, "Just checking!".

Needless to say, we will never do that again.