::"east-eh"::

We had a fun Easter. (for the most part-I'll tell ya about that later in the post)

Saturday we had the party at Grandpa Halling's house. He wasn't there, so that made it different, but the kids still did their candy hunt and everybody cooked hotdogs and sat in the yard together.

Saturday night, we got together for a little dinner for Matt's dad's birthday and then the little kids colored eggs...

Easter morning, we had an egg hunt at our house. The "east-eh" bunny hid eggs everywhere and hid their baskets! He brought BIG sidewalk chalk, bubbles, a slinky, princess nail polish, baby food, binkies, and lots and lots of candy!

Then we went to church, and then we headed down to Grandma and Papa Kitty's for Easter dinner. We had lots of fun playing outside and being together.

Now for the "for the most part" part.....

We were down at my parents house Sunday afternoon. Papa says "where's Portie?" We all just thought he was with the other kids upstairs. We checked, he wasn't there. We searched the whole house, no Porter. I went outside and didn't see him. We started to get nervous. We searched the house again. It had been probably 5 minutes since we noticed he was gone.

We all tore outside and ran all over the neighborhood looking for him. My mom brings me the phone and tells me to call 911. I didn't want to admit to myself that it was that serious, but I called anyway. I kept screaming for him. My voice was trembling and desperate. No Porter. I dropped to my knees in the middle of the road and prayed for help to find our boy. I ran through the park, through the soccer field, I passed Matt and my brother a few times hoping somebody would yell that they had found him. Nothing.

Then I saw my mom run down the street and shout "we've got him." A deep breath of relief. I ran from across the soccer field to him. Matt was carrying him with tears in his eyes. We think he walked to the park by himself and didn't see us (we were there earlier in the day), and couldn't remember which way to go to get back to Grandma's. He was gone for 20 minutes. He made it about 8 or 9 houses and 1 street away from Grandma's. I have never felt such terror in my life. So many thoughts raced through my mind (what he was doing, where he was, who had him, was he scared, was he hurt, police, amber alerts, dinosaur birthday party, Matt's family). It scares me to think of what could have happened. We are so glad to have found him safe and sound. We're thankful for my parents for their quick thinking. Papa called the bishop (they have a neighborhood calling tree thing in case of emergency) and the first person he called looked out his front door, and there sat Porter crying.

I feel like somebody is trying to tell me something. There's a message here somewhere. Sometimes we have to be slapped in the face with an event like this to learn something-I'm still trying to figure out what the Lord is trying to tell me.