Lost Child
Yesterday Erik and Thor went to their friend's house, but they decided to split up because the first friend couldn't play, so Erik told Thor he was going to Creed's house, and Thor came home, this was around 3:15. So about 40 minutes later when it was time to leave for Jiu-Jitsu and Erik wasn't home, we drove over to Creed's house to pick him up, but Erik wasn't there. So we checked one other friend's house on that street, which he wasn't at either, then left without him. Nate was home, so I called him and told him to watch for him and he was in big trouble since he wasn't where he said he'd be. At this point I was more frustrated that he was missing JJ and hadn't called to say where he'd gone, which he almost always does, or comes home before going somewhere else.
So we go to JJ, then get home about 1 1/2 hours after we had checked these two homes, and still no Erik. So Thor and I drove around the entire neighborhood checking every house we thought he might be at, but no sign of him.
By this time, it's almost 6, and on any normal day I always have the kids come home at 5:30 no matter what, and they are usually really good at doing that. So when it was about 6, and he wasn't at anyone's house in the area, we started to get pretty worried. Nate took Thor out walking with him and started checking any other places that he might be, and I stayed home in case he showed up. Nate ran into another girl from the area that was looking for her sister that was also "missing", they had been looking for her for a while and hadn't been able to find her. That's when we got really worried. So we decided to call the police just to let them know and see what else we should do. They took all the info on him and when he was last seen etc, and said they'd send a patrol over to talk to us.
So we wait, expecting a patrol car... 20 minutes later, a huge fire engine pulls up to the house along with a small fire truck. A bunch of firemen jump out and start asking all the different names of people in the area that he could possibly be at, they sent a few firemen inside the house to check around, which we had also already done.
Earlier on I had called my friend Betsy, who has kids Erik often plays with, to see if he was there, he wasn't, but she said she'd call back in a little while to make sure we'd found him. So she called back just then and said she'd go out driving around. 5 minutes later she calls me from her cell saying she'd found him AND the other little girl, at this kid's house on her street, that we had even called, but they didn't answer their freaking phone (argh?)! So she brought him home, and we gave many thanks to her and the firemen, then took him inside and we talked to him and etc etc.
Both Nate and I were just sick the rest of the night, from anxiety/stress/adrenaline, it was a yucky feeling. We were so worried, now I know what it means to be worried sick :P We had been praying all evening, we had at least 3 family prayers during that time, not to mention all the prayers we were saying just in our heads. I managed not to cry at all in the time we were looking for him, I was too busy trying to find him, but once we found him, I couldn't help just crying and letting it all out lol. All the things running through my head about him being kidnapped or whatever, ugh.. all the horrible things that could have happened to him.
Last night while I was still feeling icky from it all, and all the kids were in bed and Nate and I were just hanging out, I just wanted to go cuddle with Erik heh, so I went and laid on his bed with him and he snuggled up to me, it was good. Helped me feel a little bit better.
I'm sure there's so much more I could write about all this, but this took long enough lol.