The Lost Little Boy

Our Spring Break this year was a little boring, we hit the park, went to the library, went swimming, and baked a lot of cookies. It probably was a good foreshadow of what our summer will be like since we have no big plans. However, a month later Scott's sister came with her whole family during their spring break and we packed in as much fun as they could handle.

We went to the Beach, the Space Center, Sea World, the Alamo, the Water wall and the Galleria Mall, not to mention all the fun places we went to eat... Anyway I just wanted to share a fun story excerpt from one of our travels.

On one of the days we took the kids out of school early around lunchtime. We headed to the Johnson’s Space Center. I love going to the Space Center but I am always glad we give it a couple of years in between. They had fun exhibits and Alex sat really well during the movie. It was hard keeping a group our size together. We did a great job of not loosing anyone. *Cough Cough*

For dinner we found a fun all you can eat buffet just about 10 minutes away and headed there with the hungry bunch. It was right in the middle of rush hour and we wanted to buy ourselves some time before heading home. I tried to make sure the kids all got some substantial food on their plates before letting them loose with the cookies and ice-cream. At one point Joshua asked to use the bathroom. I pointed him in the right direction and gave my usual command, take a buddy. My kids are use to the buddy system, they aren’t suppose to go anywhere alone. After we were all stuffed and ready to roll out of the restaurant we made plans for the rest of the evening. There was a new movie out that we thought we could make, but we had to hurry. Everyone filed out and split into the two different cars.

There are two theaters by our house, and if we made good time we could still get to the earlier show, but if traffic was bad the other one started a half hour later at different theater. It took us about an hour but we made it and thought we could still make it to the earlier show. We forgot to give the other car enough warning to get off, so they had to take the next exit and back track. Scott and I waited at the theater box office ready to by tickets. When the other half of the group walked up, we were short one person. Joshua! He hadn’t been in our car, and he certainly wasn’t in their car.

Thanks to great technology we were able to look up the phone number of the restaurant we had been at and call right away. They confirmed that Joshua was there and they had the police en route. We explained that we were an hour away but we would get back as soon as we could. They said that they had found out our names, and his school, but they didn’t get any useful information from Josh to help them find us.

He is six years old and he didn’t even know our phone number! For anyone who knows our phone number that is hard to believe, every kid in the neighborhood knows our phone number. I guess we have just always taken for granted how easy it was and thought the boys knew. Granted, normally a house phone number would not have worked in this situation, but on this particular day I had our house number forwarding to my cell phone. We would have only been five minutes away when they called, not an hour and 45 miles away when he was discovered missing.

Luckily the rush hour was winding down and we made a lot better time getting back down to the restaurant. There were no flashing lights waiting for us. The police had come and gone and decided it was a closed case. Joshua was sitting by himself at a table with a big bowl of ice-cream in front of him. The manager said he kept an eye on him and just kept him loaded with the goodies.

He was real quiet on the ride home, but we got a few answers out of him. He had gone to the bathroom again, but by himself. No one knew he had gone and when he came back and saw the empty table he went outside just in time to see the last car driving away. Joshua had ridden over to the restaurant in the other car, so I had assumed that he got in that car with Samantha. I hadn’t even taken a second thought to count heads since we were running low on time, but Scott’s sister just assumed he was with us. When he walked back into the restaurant by himself the clerk flagged him right away and tried to help him. Without any useful information, they finally called the police. The police didn't arrived till after we had called and after they talked with him for a minute they left. End of Story?… not really the story goes on.

The next day we went to Sea World. We had another long trip in the car and we sang our phone number song over and over again. By the time we reached the park both Matthew and Joshua knew our number and even Alex was getting some of the numbers down. Once again in a crowded place we set up rules and what to do if you get lost or separated. We had a great day, never lost anyone, and arrived at our motel tired and ready to crash.

We had booked our 3 rooms over priceline and found out that they were more like condos. Each building had 8 units and our rooms were all over the place. When checking in we all stayed in the car while the guys got things situated. They at least got the rooms moved to 3 building next to each other, but that was the best they could do. Everyone piled out of the cars towards different rooms. There was a room for each family, and an extra room for the older kids. When we got to our room we just had Alex and Matthew. The other kids had gone to check out the “kid room” or so we thought. I didn’t even know where the other rooms were at first. It was late so I tried to get Alex down first, and arrange our room and set up.

At one point Jacob popped his head in to tell me how cool his room was and a little later Samantha came by for her pajamas. That is when I asked her to go get Joshua and bring him back to our room since I was ready to put the twins down. Joshua? He wasn’t with them. I am not kidding when I say that we had been there almost an hour again. We called all the rooms to verify that Joshua was once again missing.

Apparently Joshua had been following Jacob, but then Jacob turned a corner and ran away. That’s the story. Josh had no clue where to go. He eventually made it to the check-in area and told the front desk his name and that he was lost. He even told them our phone number! Yeah!!-except that the hour before my cell phone died and when I plugged it in I forgot to turn it back on. The front desk didn’t know what to do because none of the rooms were listed under our last name. I'm not sure how but eventually they tracked down the “kid room” and returned him there-- I think they were just knocking on random doors. This happened within five minutes of discovering he was missing, but the poor kid had gone through an hour of torture.

He said he checked and saw our cars still there so he knew we hadn't left him again, but he really was sad when we got him back. I think two days in a row was a little much for him. Jacob would have benefited from one of these experiences, since he really is the one who always runs off and gets ahead of the group, but he always finds his way back. I myself learned not to assume, it got me in trouble twice. I should have been making sure I knew where everyone was, but when you are carrying a arm full of luggage and a toddler at the same time I was just looking for the numbers on my key and went that way thinking everyone was following along.