Our Crazy Night

So, last night Zack went to The Big Red Barn for a hayride with the youth from our church. Our other children begged us to take them to the playground until we finally gave in and took them over. We sat on a bench and read our books that we are currently reading. We noticed there was a teenage boy sitting on another bench reading a Calvin and Hobbs book. He was watching some of the kids, mostly girls. They went inside for pizza and came out eating it and just were kind of running in and out of the house and squealing and having fun. We went home when it started sprinkling on us a bit hard.

After we'd been home for a while I heard a little girl crying outside. I checked to make sure Gracie was still in the basement and hadn't escaped. :) She was in the house and her brothers were too so I just didn't give it another thought. We live next to a house with several little kids and it's very common to hear crying, screaming kids outside our windows.

Well, when Zack got home from the activity, between 8:00 & 8:30, he told us that the people across the street from my parent's house couldn't find their daughter. I guess the mom called her husband, who was at the activity, too, and told him she couldn't find their daughter and she had been looking for over 30 minutes and was really worried, so he rushed home to look. Brian, Zack, my mom, and I dropped everything and immediately went outside to help look for her. I thought back to the little crying girl I had heard and I was terrified of what that could mean for this little girl. I don't know her, but I can imagine how I would feel if one of my kids was missing on a dark, cool night.

In this subdivision the houses are very close together. They are very large twin homes with about like 8-10 feet between the buildings. There is a communal playground and basketball court. I could hear people throughout the neighborhood yelling Ava!...Ava! I knocked on the door of the house next to us to see if she was there and she wasn't. Another mother came from a different house and asked what was going on so I told her and then I headed to the playground to see if Ava was there. It was VERY dark so it was hard to see anything but black. As I passed the house that those kids were running in and out of earlier in the night I could hear lots of children's voices and decided if she wasn't at the playground or on the basketball court I would go knock on that door, too.

She wasn't at the playground so I knocked on the door and rang the doorbell over and over. I could hear lots of voices and I thought I heard someone say Ava. A little boy, maybe 3 years old, came to the door and then went to get a grown up. Still no one else came to the door so I started shouting we're looking for Ava. A grown up woman came to the door and said she had just noticed a girl at the house and asked her who she was and it was Ava. Ava came to the door and I rushed her to the street, telling her that her parents were looking for her and worried sick and that we needed to get her home right away. I started yelling I found her! I found her! And she's ok! Her dad came riding his bike our way and I said that I found her. He looked at her and firmly told her to go home right now! He thanked me a couple of times and said that he couldn't have made it another 5 minutes! You know how when your child is missing, you are out of your mind with worry and all of your emotions are on the same level so that when you finally find them you can't tell whether you should hug them or smack them. LOL! You're mad, scared, relieved, happy. I was just so grateful to have found her safe and sound! And I was so happy that my kids had convinced us to go to the playground earlier so that I thought to look at that particular house. Obviously, she would have made it home at some point but I was just so happy to have found her so her parents didn't have to worry anymore! Having my children go missing is my worst nightmare!