Little Lost Puppy

Today when I picked up Kayden from school he was SO excited to show me that his teacher had given him this little black stuffed dog for his birthday. Honestly his teacher could have given him a piece of garbage and he would have been excited about it. There is just something about her that the kids just absolutely love! On our way home we had to stop by the post office and the store real fast to pick up things for dinner. Kayden didn't want to let go of that dog so I let him bring it in to the post office. The dog made it out safely from there. Then onto Smiths. I told Kayden that he needed to hold onto it and be real careful with it so he wouldn't loose it. I figured we were only getting two things so this would be a really quick trip...no problem. We had tried this in the past with a small motorcycle toy and of course he lost it so we both should have learned our lesson. He did pretty good holding it throughout the store. Kayden asked if we could go look at the Halloween stuff, he loves to try on all the masks. They had all their Halloween stuff packed into carts since they were trying to now get up all of their Christmas stuff. There was only one cart with costumes in it and masks, but it was also full of a lot of other things. I let him browse for a minute then we we checked out and went to the car. As I was buckling him up he realized he had lost his dog. I was a little frustrated and annoyed. I needed to get home to make dinner and I had told him not to let go of it. We ran back into the store for a minute and looked by the Halloween baskets and the check stand. Those were the only two places where I didn't remember him holding the dog. We couldn't find it and he went out of the store hysterically sobbing. He came home and cried and cried. I felt so bad for him. He almost had me in tears (darn prego emotions!!) He had only had that toy 20 minutes and it was gone. He kept telling me he wanted to go back to school and get another one. I made dinner and delivered it. I kept thinking I needed to just let him learn his lesson and let go of it but I couldn't. After we delivered dinner we went back to Smiths. We looked again in the shopping carts with the costumes in it, but no such luck. That dog was so small it was like trying to find a needle in a haystack. We asked the service desk if anyone had turned in a little dog and we went back to the check stand and asked the checkers if it had turned up. Again no such luck. I was ready to go but I thought we could look just one more time in that basket. I started pulling out more costumes and masks again (for the third time) and there he was just laying in the middle of a pile of costumes. Kayden was SO excited we had found him he walked out of that store a happy little boy. We came home and thanked Heavenly Father for helping us find his little dog. I was shocked that we had found him, and on the third try. Kayden will never be taking in another toy to that store they will all have to wait in the car!! I am so grateful for that small little miracle that made the day of my four year old. He really hasn't let go of it since!