Land of the Lost

I live in the land of the lost.  We are going almost every second of the day.  I'm lucky if I get home at one o'clock with Allie.  I emphasize the "with Allie" part because that means she begs me constantly if I'll play with her or watch her ride her bike outside and it's a miracle if any housework gets done.  I pick up Avery at 3:30 and we have a short time at home to eat a snack, practice piano, and talk together a bit before we shoot off to soccer... or tee ball practice... or a game... or church... or piano lessons. 
Ok, so there's my whining.  I have been losing things like crazy.  It's not really like me.  I am not the most organized gal on the block, but I am usually able to keep track of our things.  Rich loses things around the house quite often and looks and looks for them.  I always find them :)  Well, I haven't been finding them lately! 

**I lost my keys for a couple weeks and thought I was going to go crazy without them.  Turns out Avery had them and absent-mindedly tossed them in the garage behind my dry storage food.

**Rich left his shoes on our front porch.  Those didn't get lost - they got "ganked".  That's gangsta for stolen. 

**Allie has two pairs of shoes that she wears almost exclusively.  She has lost one of each pair - at the same time - several times over the last few months.  She wore whatever extra shoes I could find for days before I was finally able to locate the missing matches.

**I lost my sunglasses.  I was so bummed!  I loved them and I really didn't want to buy a new pair.  I had worn them to a tee ball game at school on a Tuesday night.  The rest of the week I looked everywhere for them.  On Saturday we went to another tee ball game at the same field, but our team was playing on the other side.  I stopped on the side we had played at on Tuesday, just to visit with an old college friend, and looked down and saw my sunglasses!  They weren't broken or even bent!  Avery was with me and we both celebrated.  It was a good moment to talk about how God might not care a ton about my sunglasses, but He cares about me :)

**Rich lost his ipod.  This was a big one.  This was a big splurge for Father's Day last year and we definitely aren't going to replace it if it goes away for good.  We prayed as a family and I asked for friends to pray that we would find it.  We were counting on being able to use it on our mission trip to Guatemala (more details on that in a different post).  Well, after missing it for a week, Rich's dad calls and it turns out it was in his couch!  Thank you, Lord!

**Avery lost her soccer cleat.  I looked everywhere.  My whole family looked everywhere.  Tonight I realized if she didn't find it by tomorrow for her game, I was going to have to come up with some more cleats for her to be able to play.  I decided to look in our hallway closet one more time, and there it was in plain sight! 

I can't even remember everything else we lost.  But I'm so thankful for God's presence!  Yes, things feel crazy.  Yes, I'm having a lot of trouble keeping track of things in this very busy season.  But God cares!  He sees my struggles and hears my cries over soccer cleats and sunglasses and He's been so faithful to get me through it.  Thank you, Lord, for caring about my little life with little struggles that, to me, feel kinda big sometimes :)