Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Where is Josh?

Ok, so I thought getting a computer at home that I would be updating this thing all the time, but I am finding it wasn't the computer that was the problem, its not having the time to sit here and hear myself think for longer than ten minutes :)!! So we had something happen to us last week that made me soooo much more paranoid. We had company coming over for dinner, and I was planning a very nice chinese menu. I had gotten the egg roll mix all made, the rice cooked and cooling for the fried rice, the chicken prepped for cooking and I had time to take a little break. So I decided to watch some tv. Willey was on the computer, Ryan and Zack were both sleeping and Josh had just woken up. He came in and asked me if he could go play at the neighbors across the street, and I told him that was fine. I went to the door and watched him walk across the street (we live out in RURAL Pima), he knocked on the door and no one answered. So I figured he would come home. Well there were kids playing across the street from our nieghbors and I peeked out the window to see him watching the kids play and walking toward them. I just assumed that he would go play and I would have Willey go get him in 30 mins. So that time passed, and I started cooking again and asked Willey to get Josh. He took Ryan with him and went to the neighbors, but he wasn't there, and the kids said he never came there to play. They all saw him standing on the corner, but he never walked over there. No biggie, we live in a neighborhood FULL of kids, so I put in the call to ALL the neighbors around us, and with each phone call my heart sank as they said, no we haven't seen him, try so and so. Willey got into the Suburban and started to drive around, while I still tried to see if anyone had seen him. By this time some of (well most of) our neighbors had come out of their houses and had began searching with us. The kids were riding around on thier bikes yelling his name and the dads were driving around looking by the pond down the street and in the empty houses that aren't done being built. They had checked one of our neighbors back yard about 4 times, because they have a lot of fun play equipment, but they weren't home and no one saw him playing back there. Now it had been about 40 minutes since we started looking, so almost and hour and a half since I had seen him, and I was sobbing!! I kept trying to keep it together but I had my little 3 year old Ryan saying,"Well I guess now you only have 2 boys", "only two kids now!!" And I would just burst into tears. Willey finally came home and said we need to pray. We got on our knees and with his voice choking back the tears through the whole prayer, we pleaded with our Heavenly Father to help guide us to Josh, and to please make him be safe. As soon as the prayer was finished, I told Willey that we needed to check the neighbor with all the backyard toys again, I knew that it had been checked over and over, but that was what the spirit was telling me. We walked outside and Willey started down there when we saw him walking toward the house. He had been in that neighbors back yard in a tower thing that they have and he had seen everyone around and yelling his name, but he said he didnt want to get into trouble for not having permission to be there. I was so happy and so angry at the same time, I didn't know whether to send him to his room or just hold him tightly. Luckily the good overcame me and I just held onto him and thanked my heavenly father for answering our prayers so quickly, and that josh was safe and home. He is now experiencing what it means to be grounded for a week, and we are working with all the boys to teach them how to be safe and not give their parents a heart attack like josh almost did!!

7 comments:

Hawkins Family said...

Oh my gosh!! How scary! How sad that Ryan was saying that! I would have been crying too. I am glad that he made it home safe and sound! Thank heavens for good neighbors and heavenly father to help you out!!

Bec said...

Darned kid! How scary!!! I'm glad you found him... and still have three boys! ;) It's funny that Ryan would say that... kids are silly... but I would be sobbing, too.

Good luck with the grounding. And so it begins...

Andy and Michele said...

Oh, how scary! Thank goodness for the power of prayer. I'm so glad that he is safe. That's so cool that all the neighbors dropped everything and helped.

Family of Five said...

Holy Crap!!! HATE that feeling of not finding a child!!! So glad he was okay and learning a good lesson now! We were up in ID visiting Family, and realized Andrea was no where to be found. After just 10 min of frantic searching realized she had fallen sound asleep under some toys! 40 min though! Glad everyone is okay!

Little Family!!!! said...

Oh that was a scary day! I was so mad at myself for not getting out of the truck when Brandon looked in their backyard. That was the first place I told him to go. I should have looked with him. But I am glad somebody finally found. And dinner was still very yummy! :)

Melissa said...

AHHH! Moments like that are so hard as a parent! So glad he was safe!

Candi said...

Oh My Gosh! That is so scary!! I decided to take all three of my girls to Sea World once by myself (I don't know what I was thinking). Brooklyn was still a little baby so as we were coming out of the sea lion show I was carrying her and the other two were holding onto each side of my shirt. There is only one exit and about 5,000 (I could be off on that number, but it was a lot) people trying to get out. Courtney's hand ended up getting knocked off my shirt and she got swept into the sea of people. I searched and searched for her and couldn't find her. I had showed all the girls what the workers shirts looked like when we got there and told them that if anything happens they need to find one of them to help them. So what seemed like forever of searching and not finding her (in reality it was probably 4 or 5 minutes) I went back into the sea lion stadium which was now cleared out and there she was sitting with a worker while another working was calling her into the office. She was so scared that she wouldn't let go of me the rest of the day. Not a fun feeling.