Sarah had a sleepover on Saturday night. Only one friend showed up (out of four, thank goodness!). It wasn't bad at all. There was ice cream and Doritos. They watched the G-Force movie, painted their nails, and had a dancing contest. Sarah didn't want Savannah to be a part of the sleepover (how sweet, huh?), but hey... she does live here too.
We left them sleeping on their mattresses in the living room, with the overhead kitchen light for a nightlight. This was around 10 PM. Nikki and I retired to the bedroom to do... uh... things (hehe), and then we laid there and read for a bit. I konked out at around 12 midnight with Nikki snoring away next to me, and the kids were still gabbing away.
The next day, Sarah was outside and she rushed into the house to ask if she could go over her friend's house for a birthday party. Her friend's name is also Sarah. Nikki told her yes without thinking, as she was kind of distracted for a moment. It was an honest mistake, but I didn't pick up the slack at all. I was in the middle of making dinner, and all I asked her was, "Are they giving you dinner? Because dinner's almost ready." She said "yes," got some things, and then said, "maybe, I'm not sure," right before the door slammed behind her.
It wasn't long before I realized that we didn't know where this kid lives, and how long the party was going to run. We've talked to this other Sarah before, and she lives in our apartment complex, but we had no apartment number, no phone number, nothing.
Eight o'clock came and went. It was dark out and very cold. We put the other two to bed and went out in search of our daughter. I was seriously considering going door-to-door and asking people if they knew where this little girl, Sarah lived, because our little girl was over at her birthday party and we didn't know where to pick her up. Gah.
Anyway, we walked around, and Nikki belted out "SARAH!!!" quite a few times. Man, she can be loud when she wants to be! But since Sarah was inside with people talking, Nikki still would've had to be right outside her window to have any chance of Sarah hearing her.
We went over to her friend's apartment to ask her if she knew where Sarah lived. As we were waiting for someone to come to the door, we heard Sarah's voice from far away. She was knocking on our door, and Savannah was taking her time answering it. (Yes, we did put her to bed, but she habitually takes at least an hour to fall asleep, every night.) Luckily, her friend lived in the building next to ours, so we ran over there to see that someone in a car had dropped her off.
She was hysterically crying, saying that she thought we left her locked her out of the house, and that Sarah's mother had called, but the cellphone was off. Oops.
All's well that ended well, and we learned (which was stupid, because we always did this!) to get an address, a phone number, and hey, to meet at least one of the parents would be nice. We're so glad that Sarah got home safe and sound. With the things that happen in today's world, the thoughts that were running through our heads were quite dire.
Sigh... next challenge?
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