The Worst Birthday I’ve Ever Had

Yup that’s right. I think I can safely without a doubt say this is the worst birthday I’ve ever had. “Why?” you ask? Well I’ll tell you.

The day started out fine. I woke up early and got Kyle up so he could get started on painting the bunk bed for the girls. After awhile he wanted to take a break so he came inside and we made a nice breakfast. I watched a few old movies with the kids to keep them occupied while Kyle was out painting the bed some more. After awhile we decided that spray painting the bed wasn’t working at all, and I got frustrated because it is taking FOREVER to paint that stinking bed, and it just isn’t looking any better. SO I went to home depot. I wanted to get some hooks so we can hang the shovels and rakes and things up in the garage, so they aren’t on the floor anymore. I got the hooks, and a new snow shovel since the one we have is lousy. Then I went to the paint department to see if they could make the paint we were using in a bucket (so we can brush it on instead of spraying it on). Home depot couldn’t do it so I went to Lowes. They got close, which is good enough for me. Hey at least they tried. 😉

When I got home we went out to the garage to install the hooks and hang up our tools. Sandy helped a bit, then she went inside to watch the kids. Robert helped Kyle make the holes and I stood there to tell them which hooks to use for what and where to put them. We were almost done, when Robert and Sandy decided they needed to hit the road and head home. Kyle and I finished the last couple of hooks ourselves, then we went to put the lawn mower and bikes back in the garage. But wait….where’s Jeremy’s bike? Uh is it on this side of the house? No. On the other side of the house? No. It couldn’t be in the backyard, the kids can’t get the gates open. Is it up the street somewhere? No. Hmmmmm.

I went inside to ask the kids what they did with Jeremy’s bike and wait….there’s a kid missing. Where’s Dinah? Is she in my bathroom? No. In one of the kids rooms? No. Did she fall asleep someplace funny (the kids didn’t have a nap today)? No. Shoot! Where’d she go….. GASP! Could she be somewhere with the missing bike!??

I went outside to inform Kyle that in addition to the bike being gone, Dinah was gone too. I went up the street to look for her and he went the other way. I went down the trail to the next street over, searching for her (we’ve gone that way bike riding before) but no sign of her. I walked all the way around back to our house again, and when I saw Kyle I asked if he had found her. “No”. UH WHAT? She’s still missing? (Ok now I’m really starting to panic.) I jumped in the car so I could cover more ground more quickly, and started driving around our neighborhood. Looking everywhere, HOPING that she wasn’t in somebody’s backyard. I drove up our street, down the next around over to the school, thinking that maybe she went to go play on the slide in the kindergarten yard (she likes that slide) NO sign of her. I saw a police SUV in front of the last house by the school, and I thought about asking them to help us find her. But the officer wasn’t in the car so he must have been in the house, and I didn’t want to interrupt whatever might have been going on there, so I just kept going. I called Kyle, he thought I was calling to say I found her. I asked him to call some neighbors and get some help looking for her, it was nearly dark, she had been gone for quite a bit of time now. And once it gets dark, it’s going to be impossible to see her. I drove around closer to the church since I hadn’t gone that way yet. Then I came home, got the other four kids in the car, so that Kyle could go out looking too.

Kyle had called Sandy and Robert, and they drove back to help look for her. And some of our neighbors went out on foot and on bikes, to look for her, some being assigned to look behind houses. Ok as if I wasn’t freaking out before, NOW I’m really freaked out!

I rolled down both front windows in the van and slowly drove up our street, and down the next, calling her name out each window. I got to the end of the street behind ours when a police office stopped me, and asked me if I had lost a little blue eyed, blond about two years old? UH YES! OH MY GOSH that was the third time I had gone that way. I saw the police cars there all three times, they had been there because the guy that lived there saw Dinah pushing the bike past the school, all by herself. He took her home and they called it in to the police. Had they kept her on the porch I would have seen her the FIRST time I went that way, and we would have had her back before it got dark, and before we started seriously freaking out.

The officer asked me to pull my car over in front of his, and he went inside to get her. The people that lived there brought her out, and she was just as happy as could be. (NO clue in her mind about how scary the whole situation was for the rest of us). The officer asked me what the situation was, WHY she had gone missing in the first place. He wanted ALL of my information, my name, my phone number, my address, Dinah’s name….(I guess so he could write up his report to account for his time????) Now she is home, and safe, but the whole thing was a total nightmare!

Happy Birthday to me!