On Thursday, I got a call from Natalie's home therapist that she would have to cancel Friday's appointment. I thought this would be the perfect chance to head out to my grandma's house with the girls to spend the night. We hadn't gotten together since Thanksgiving because of weather and all of the appointments we keep every week. It seems like whenever we had two days off, it was storming and would make me nervous for the two hour drive. We left Friday morning right from Lauren's ballet class.
Packing is pretty easy, I packed one large duffel bag with all the clothes and toiletries and diapers for myself and the girls. I also take the playpen for Natalie and I let Lauren pack a small backpack of toys. Before ballet, we loaded everything up and Ben set Lauren up with the DVD player and her case of movies. It's one of those zippered books that holds around 100 DVDs and has a little handle. Lauren carries that case all over, from her bedroom where she watches a movie in bed, to her playroom or the living room where she'd like to watch something. All of her movies are in it... the Disney classics like Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, the Nick Jr. compilations with Dora, Backyardigans, Kai-Lan, the Barbie movies, Strawberry Shortcake movies, Max & Ruby.... all of her favorites.
I drove straight to ballet, got Natalie and Lauren out, sat inside. After class, I loaded the girls back in the car. Over the sound and through the woods to grandmother's house we go. Or, went. We got to her house and when I was bringing the bags in, she stopped me. She had a family from church staying with her. They were getting ready to move to Ohio. Their house was being packed and cleaned for showings by the realtor and they had been staying in her spare room. They were leaving that afternoon, but their things were still in the bedroom that the girls and I would be in that night. She told me just to set my things down and we'd put them in there after the family left. They were out when I got there, but she expected them back around 4:00 to load up their stuff and head to the airport.
We let Lauren paint, and I painted with her, we played some hide and seek with Lauren, played Lauren's My Little Pony board game and then headed out to the store to pick up a few things so that I could cook dinner. We got home just before the family did and I was cooking up some chicken breast when they came in. The dad and daughter were running late, so they were rushing around to get all of their suitcases packed and loaded into the car. Another friend of theirs from church was going to be driving them to the airport, and he was helping to load their things, also. It was kind of a mad dash and I just did my best to stay out of their way.
After dinner, Lauren asked to watch a movie, and ... that's when we realized we couldn't find the movies. Right away, my grandma figured it must have been loaded with the stuff the family was taking to the airport. I called Ben to ask if he had loaded the movies, he said he was 99% sure they had been on the seat next to Lauren. He thought there was a small chance he had left them on the roof of my car, so he went and checked the alley off the garage, the street, and called the base police to inquire about the lost and found. My grandma called around until she got the family's cell phone number and she called to ask if they had it, but they were in the car and would have to wait to look until they got to the hotel by the airport.
The next day, we still hadn't heard back. I searched all over my grandma's house to see if they had been moved out of the way, but couldn't find them. I stopped at WalMart on our way home and picked out a few movies for Lauren from their $5 bin so she'd have something for the 2 hour drive home, and something for bedtime. Saturday came and went and we didn't hear anything back.
Sunday I started browsing eBay and Craigslist for secondhand kid movies because I figured our collection was long gone. I was getting really sad about the thought of replacing all those movies. Over a hundred movies at an average of $10 each (if not more) is a THOUSAND DOLLARS worth of movies. And they were just gone.
My grandma called me last night. The family had found our movies! They are putting them in the mail Monday morning. We're so relieved. Lauren did get about 10 new movies out of it, including Beauty and the Beast, which she didn't have and I won on eBay. I'm also fairly certain we'll be only taking a few movies when we travel from now on.
Cath Kidston is a British designer. The website sells homegoods (like umbrellas and gadget cases), clothes, fabric, kitchen stuff and more. And all of it is in very lovely prints that are just adorable. The fabrics are my favorite. I would love to have a giant sewing stash of her fabrics. Actually, I'd love to have at least one of every single thing on her site. She has two cute sewing books, too. I may have to go add them to my Amazon wishlist, like, right now. 
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