A Good Beginning, a Horrible Middle, and a Good Ending

This weekend was Marigold Days in nearby Mantorville. They had their parade this afternoon, so I decided to take the kids. (Dave had a baseball game so I had to take them by myself.) The parade was fun; both kids really enjoyed it. After the parade we went to watch the firemen's water fight, which was also fun, although we all got a little wet. After that we started back to the car, but on the way Martin spotted a playground and begged to stop and play. I agreed and so we headed over. Libby is fearless on a playground, plus Dave taught her to go down slides head first, so I have to keep a pretty close eye on her. I was up in one of the pieces of playground equipment with Libby when I realized that I hadn't seen Martin in a little while. I grabbed Libby and started looking for him and realized that he was nowhere to be seen. I must have circled the playground 3 or 4 times just trying to figure out what to do. The playground was surrounded by all the food vendors and merchant tents set up for the festival so there were just tons of people around. Finally I went up to a lady who was selling tickets to play on a big inflatable slide and asked her if she had seen a little boy in a blue shirt with a Twins cap on. (Well, I tried to ask her, I had a hard time talking through the tears.) She was a wonderfully kind lady, she assured me everything was going to be fine and that she had dealt with this situation once already today. She ended up calling the Sheriff's office and we quickly found out that Martin was safe and sound and waiting outside the Sheriff's station for me. It turns out that Martin lost sight of me and started yelling, "Mom, Mom..." Some middle school aged girls heard him and brought him to a Sheriff's deputy. I don't know where exactly he was when they found him, but I don't think it was very far from the playground. I don't think Martin was scared at all. In fact, he hardly hugged me when I picked him up. (I guess that is just a testament to the fact that he knows relatively little about the evils of this world.) Martin told the deputy that his first name was Martin and that his last name was Roger - something he was a little embarrassed about when I reminded him that his last name was Paulsen. They must have asked him what I was wearing because the first thing he said after I hugged him was, "Oh, she has a blue shirt." I have no idea how long he was missing. It seemed like hours to me, but was probably no more than 10-15 minutes. I am very grateful to have my little boy safe and sound and I pray I never have to go through anything like that again.