Had a bit of a scare this afternoon when I could not find Jax or Dex. They walked up to the park to meet me as usual but Jax realized that he had forgotten his book and wanted to go back to his class. Dex went with him and I told them I would drive to the school and meet them out the front (the park is behind the back school yard and they follow a path up there).

When I left the park, there was a huge traffic jam for some reason (25 cars on our end trying to get through a 4 way stop with many more cars coming from each direction) so it took me 8 minutes to get to the school. No Jax or Dex out front. By this time it is about 16 minutes after school has let out and it was pissing rain so the school was pretty much deserted. I parked the car and Cars and I ran to Jax's classroom door. No Jax or Dex.

I saw Ash talking to a teacher so I called to her and asked her if she had seen my kids. She said NO (she was standing right next to Jax's classroom door so I thought for sure she would have seen him) so I took off running to the office to see if they could radio the teacher's aide at the park (she goes to the park after school each day to ensure that all the kids who walk up to the park get picked up) to see if they had gone back up there.

As I am about to walk into the office I hear them page Jax to go to the office and I flip out - why did they do that?! (ok, breathe) Ash met up with me and told me that Gav's teacher was going to call the office to have Jax paged (ok, breathe). At that moment I see the teacher's aide from the park walk into the school without Jax and Dex (she walks stragglers back to the office). (ok, breathe, breathe). I ask her if I had seen my kids. She said yes, she sent them to the front of the school to meet me because she had not seen my car at the park and was wondering why they were walking back up there so late.

Just then, I saw them heading to through the front doors of the school (heavy sigh of relief) because they had heard the page. I scolded them about not doing what they were told to do "But you took so long to get here!" they protested. (ok, breathe).

My fear was that we would just keep missing each other going back and forth from the school to the park, never mind the fact that there are *4* sex offenders (3 are pedophiles) living less than 1 mile from the school.

So, we reviewed what they should have done (waited outside of the school) and what they will do next time, which is to wait outside of the school but if they are concerned go to the office because they can call me from there. Also, I will think twice about leting them go back alone for anything left behind.

Next I am ordering ""Protecting the Gift" because it is a good book and I need my own copy and The Safe Side - Stranger Safety which has been advertised over and over again on Nick Jr. Dex asked me to buy it earlier in the day, in fact.

This whole episode coming on the heels of me finding out that that twice in the past two weeks someone found a my blog via searching for "boys" and viewed a photo of my kids in a swimming pool has creeped me out.