WAKE UP KEVIN! AUSTIN IS MISSING!

Those six words pierced my state of unconsciousness at 4 a.m., and jolted me awake in an instant. Those were the words that my wife used to awake me during our Minneapolis Spring Break getaway. We were in a big city hotel, and Connie had awoken abruptly when she heard the door in our room open and shut. We both jumped out of bed to discover that our eight year old son, Austin was not in his bed.

We feared the worst -- Austin had walked out of the room in his sleep and was wandering through the hotel. Connie rushed to the door, undid the chain lock & deadbolt, and rushed into the hall -- there was no sight of Austin. She took off down the hall frantically searching for him and yelling his name. As she approached the elevators, her heart sunk. Could he have gotten on the elevator? What floor did he get off on? Where could he be?

I was back in the room trying to figure out what to do next. Seconds later, Austin walked out of the bathroom from our hotel room. The door Connie heard open and shut was not our room door that led to the hall -- it was the bathroom door! The little guy just had to go! As we got back into bed, I asked Connie, “When you were unlocking the chain and deadbolt on our door, did it not occur to you that there was no way that Austin could have made it out into the hall, and then re-locked the door from inside our room?” She thought about it for a second, and replied, "Oh, I guess that would have been difficult to do!"

We then laughed ourselves to sleep!