I Lost the Car Keys in a Field

Last Thursday was one of those horrible, terrible, no good very bad days when I lost the car keys in the field. But before that...

One day I made Ava play dough that has a jello mix in it. She liked playing with it until she started smearing it in the carpet. Then it was all done with the play dough.

On Wednesday, the long-awaited day came when Laura came home from her mission! I was so excited I could hardly work all day! It has been so fun talking to her through FaceTime since she got home!

On Thursday I went to Flower Mound to run errands and also to take Ava to a blue bonnet field that some girls in the ward told me about. At the flower field I took Ava out of her car seat and locked the car (I had Brent's car that day) and she was so excited to run around the field. She was going crazy! It was so hard to get any good pictures. Here are the best ones I got:

Here are some out-takes showing how she wouldn't hold still:

After we ran around for about 15 minutes I reached into my pocket to get the car keys... and they were gone. I ran back to the car to make sure I didn't lock them in there, but they weren't in there. They were in this huge field! I started panicking and called Brent. He told me to keep looking. I sent him this picture to show him I could be there all day and not find them:

I looked for a little longer and Brent started the long drive from his school to come save us. Ava fell asleep for a while:

 We looked and looked and couldn't find them. It was time for Brent's next class to start. I took him back to school and came home to eat lunch. We had gotten sunburned and were starving!

I got a metal detector from someone in the ward and picked up Brent from his class with just enough time in the day to go check the field one more time. Brent's friend Chris came out to help. We searched for about another hour and a half.

I kept praying and praying, and all of a sudden I thought, if they were going to fall out, it had to be in the very beginning by the car. I told Brent that. It was getting dark, so he walked over to Chris, who was by our car, to tell him we were giving up. Just then, in the middle of the field, closer to our car, Brent found the keys! It was a major celebration :) From this picture you can see how we had run out of daylight when he found them.

 We went out to Mexican food even though it was 9pm with Chris to celebrate. We were so happy we didn't have to have the car towed to a Mazda dealership and have new keys made for it!

Now any time Ava sees any of the pictures in the field she says "keys!" She was a good sport the whole day.

Ava has been excited that Laura is home, or at least she mimics my enthusiasm (I don't think she remembers Laura) :) Here's a cute little video:

On Saturday afternoon Brent went to "man-richment" with the Elders Quorum. They went to see the Avengers at the theater. (Brent is in the EQ presidency- I wonder if he had anything to do with that plan?) He had lots of fun with his buddies. Then that night we got a babysitter for Ava and Brent and I went on a real date! It was so nice. We went to get pizza and then to a play at UNT.

On Sunday we had our Disney night with a couple friends from the ward at our house. It was a good end to the week!