Playing Phone Tag

Here is my (at least) third attempt at typing this. I had "help" from Josie and I still don't quite know what she did...as Dr. Cox once said on the series "Scrubs"..."I need trouble, I have some help."

Our cordless phones are all connected so that if one of them is turned on it tells you on the others that the "line is in use." My kids always seem to know exactly what buttons to push to turn things on, to adjust the volume, etc.
Last night as Jim and I were getting in bed I noticed that it said the phone was "in use" but we could only find 3 out of 4 of the phones. I think Josie had been playing with them and left one of them on. Now once we were short a phone for about a month and a half because we couldn't find one and the battery depleted and we couldn't use the locate button (that time the phone was off but just lost). So now we have learned that you have to look while the battery is still good. We did finally find the phone by Jim listening on one and walking around to make noise until we could hear it (we didn't want it to ring to locate it for fear that it was in one of the kids' rooms while they were sleeping). I should have had Jim look at how long the phone had been on because our record for one of the kids leaving the phone on is 4+ hours. During that time I was trying to call Jim to tell him I was driving home on a 3 hour drive and for at least 90 minutes of the drive I tried calling but of course I couldn't get the home phone since it was already on and he wasn't answering his cell phone. I think last night might have topped that record. So if you ever try and call us and we don't answer and it doesn't go to the answering machine it might just be that the kids have lost the phone.