gmcmurry:
Here is my last question for this thread...
There is always more questions... 
Is it OK to just NOT plug in the LCDs if I am not using them? I am not doing anything with the status from the LCD so I am guessing that when I init the LCDs, it just times out and moves on.
It is ok leave them unplugged.
What can cause issues is plugging them in or unplugging them while the system is running.
That can cause glitches on the i2c lines that can cause the AVR to lock up due to certain i2c signal exceptions not being properly handled down in the Wire library.
When unplugged, the hd44780 library will be returning errors but if you are not looking at the return status then your code won't know the difference.
--- bill