The Up Side to Social Media

**Retroactive Post: March 17, 2013**

May 9th last year was a crazy day. In fact, it was insane.

We were moving. We were homeless. And I was leaving for Washington in less than 24 hours. Our underwriters hadn't finished the loan yet and that day I had to sign power of attorney over to Ryan. I was leaving not knowing when my little family would have a home.

Luckily, my mom watched Adi while my mother-in-law came down to help me clean. We packed, scrubbed, and threw (literally) odds and ends into my car. (They're both seriously amazing.)

At the end of the day, headed back to my parent's house, I was grateful for getting everything done by the skin of my teeth.

When I got there, Adi and my mom were sleeping. My mom woke up and said that I should sit down.

Okay...

She proceeded to relay the events of the day. One minute, Adi was there. The next minute, Adi was gone. She thought she might have been hiding, but checked the house. She was gone.

My mom is really good under pressure, especially emergency pressure. She immediately called my younger brother (who had just left for class) and asked him to come home immediately to help look for her. Then she called the police.

Austin came home and started looking up and down the street on foot.

The police came and scoured the house. No sign of her.

Austin decided he was going to change his tactics and came home for the truck and headed back the opposite direction.

The police officer kept looking while Austin drove around the neighborhood. When he drove up the street perpendicular to my parents', a landscaper was working in a yard and Austin yelled to ask him if he'd seen a little girl. He said he had seen one a little while ago, and that one of the neighbors had picked her up.

Um... okay which one. He pointed to a house on the corner, so Austin went to ask if they'd seen her. IT turns out, she hadn't recognized her, but didn't want her to go out in the street.

But, Joeen had recognized her. Off the top of her head, she didn't know who she was, but she said that she knew her from non other than Facebook.

She was at the Hill's house. Safe and sound. (She'd made it completely down the street, around two corners into a cup-de-sac.

When Austin picked her up he said he was stern and said "You are in trouble." Sheepishly she said in her little two-year-old voice, "I left the yard."

After confirming that they had actually found Adi, the police officer left and my mom sat down Adi to talk to her. Adi was fully aware that she was in trouble and when my mom asked her why she said. "I ran away. I left the yard."

At this point when my mom was telling the story I could not help but laugh. My little brother was really concerned that Adi was so unhappy that she'd run away from home. I wasn't concnered, because Adi had just learned what it mean to run away from someone and had just followed the sidewalk (where they took walks) as she ran away from grandma. Her little confession was so funny.

Needless to say I was ecstatic that I had not been told about the issue until retrospect, I probably would have been a basketcase.

But, I was grateful to Joeen and grateful that she recognized her as from Facebook.