Nobody Panic.

I knew that today wouldn't be a very good day, especially when Wyatt comes home from school early. Why did I know that? Because I have two other children that depend on that big brother to keep them on target. So today when Wyatt came home early, I made sure that the girls knew that he was sick and that they were supposed to ride the bus home, but stay together. Well, I will give them the fact that they followed the directions....sort of. They rode the bus and they stayed together, they just didn't get home on time. So needless to say we are going to have a lesson on following directions, how to get help and for the older ones the difference between teaching the younger ones and just doing it for them.
So by now you are probably questioning as to what happened. They story is this: for about 45 minutes I was missing 2 little girls. Amanda came home on the bus and she didn't have two tag-alongs with her. I tried not to panic, but that is a hard thing to do. I started by calling the school, although I knew that if they were there and had missed the bus entirely the school would have called. Then I called the bus garage. They are wonderful people there. They radioed the other buses and gave a discription of Beth and Mariah so that they could be on the look out for the MIA girls. When they called me back, I discovered that they had been reported as getting off at a stop in town near their cousin's school. So my next call was to my sister-in-law to see if she had them....not. I called back to the bus garage and told them we still didn't have them, and so they kept looking for them. Then I get a call back that they had been located. They had gotten off at this other stop and went to a friend's house that lived near there. This friend's mother called the bus garage and found out that they were missing and brought them back there, so that I, now the frantic mother, could come and pick them up.
Thankfully, everything worked out fine. But you don't know how close I came to calling the police. I hate when I can't find the children. Even in my own home if I can't find them I start to panic and think bad things are happening. I know now how my mother felt some 28 yrs ago when she gets a call from the school telling her that I was not there when I should have been. I am thankful that the girls had each other and that they stuck together. So nobody panic all is well now.