Phew! That was a close one!

September 14th and 15th we had Stake Conference--a church meeting where several local church congregations in our area meet together to worship and be instructed.  We had to bring our girls with us to the adult session Saturday evening because our regular babysitters were unavailable.  Aurora had a late nap that day and we had to wake her up to go to the meeting.  She was pretty sad and cranky, so we let her bring her special blanket--something we usually don't allow--for comfort.  The girls really did pretty well, and the meeting was great.  As we were leaving to go home, we had only driven a very short distance from the church when we realized Aurora's special "blankey-blankey" was missing!  We searched the car and diaper bag several times.  When it didn't appear, we went back to the church to see if we could find it.  I stayed in the car with the girls while Darwin went to search the church.

Aurora I think finally realized we weren't playing around that Blankey was missing and she started to cry.  I did my best to comfort her and told her Daddy was looking for Blankey.

Amidst her tears she cried, "Mommy.  This is terrible!  Are a gunna do?"

I reassured her we were going to keep looking for it.

Darwin swept the church 3 times, and even areas we thought might have lost-and-found items.  No blankey.  We called a friend who had been sitting in front of us to see if we had maybe left it and she had picked it up for us.  Still no.

We really didn't have any other choice but to go home and try again when we went back to the church for our Sunday meetings.

When we got home, as soon as we stepped in the door, Aurora yelled, "Blankey-blankey!  Where are you?!"

She actually did okay going to sleep without it.  I think Darwin and I were more distressed about the missing blanket than she was.  This was our first real experience as parents of realizing how attached we are to our kids special things too.  Haha.

On Sunday, Darwin went for an early morning meeting and looked again.  When he still didn't find it, he asked our Stake President if he'd be willing to maybe announce that Aurora was missing her blanket.  We were feeling kind of desperate at this point.  President Park was more than happy to do it.  He did it in such a cute way too.  Over the pulpit he announced something like, "On behalf of the 300 children under age 3 in our stake: Aurora, a 2 year old in our congregation, was attending the adult meeting last night and lost a very special blanket.  If you have found it, would you please turn it in to one of the Stake presidency and we'll make sure it gets returned to her."

During the next two hours, Aurora kept asking if we could go look for her blanket.  As soon as the meeting was over, we made our way into the chapel and up to the front to see if anyone had happened to turn it in.

Sure enough, President Park had Rori's blanket lovingly tucked under his arm.  He was in a discussion with another person when we spotted it.  President Erickson grabbed Aurora's hand and led her over to President Park.  President Park immediately knelt down and very happily gave Aurora her blanket back.  She gave him a great big hug and quietly thanked him.  I thought it was super cute that he wanted a picture of Aurora with her missing-but-found-again blanket--and he was kind enough to send us a copy of the picture.  She really was thrilled to have it back, but not smiling in the picture because I think she was a little intimidated by all the grown-ups around.

As Aurora walked away from President Park, she wiped the back of her hand across her forehead and exclaimed, "Phew!  That was a close one!"  Haha.  Kids are a crack-up!

It really was a close one!  Darwin and I were trying to figure out what we'd do if we couldn't find her special blanket.  We are so grateful to the kind soul who found Aurora's blanket and turned it in.  Turns out she dropped it in the parking lot Saturday night as we were getting out of our car to go in for the meeting--the blanket never even made it into the church!

Our precious little girl so happy to have her blanket back!

I think we've all learned a valuable lesson from this experience.  We really need to leave special items at home--especially during Stake events.  This same time last year at the same Stake meeting, Aurora left a special puppy behind, for which Daddy had to borrow President Eppich's church keys to find her special puppy.  Lesson learned.  Twice.