A Visit with Friends

Last week the girls and I had such a fun day meeting my friend from Houston Melissa and her little girl Anna at the beach in Oceanside. I'm so glad Melissa's family lives her so at least once a year I get to see her. Anna and Aubrey are about a month and a half apart so it's always fun getting to see them play together. The day started off great and we actually got to talk quite a bit, especially since her mom was there so we had more eyes on all the girls. But as the day went on it got a bit more interesting.

This is where the story gets long, but I wanted to record it for myself to remember! About an hour after we got there we noticed this little boy playing with our kids. He was wearing a huge heavy jacket, even thought it was really warm out, and we couldn't figure out who he belonged too. Long story short, his grandma ended up showing up but slept in different slides all day and paid absolutely no attention to him. We actually fed him, gave him some food, took his coat off and basically took care of him all day. We finally got the lifeguards to call the cops because this situation just wasn't right and how in the world could we leave with this poor little guy having nobody to watch him. We found out that she had taken him from her son 3 days before and he had no idea where they were. Crazy! His name was Auto and Aubrey talked about him for a few days and even prayed for him that night. I still feel so bad for him.

If you are still hanging in there to this super long story, the day gets even a little more interesting. After Melissa had got to the beach we decided to move our stuff down farther towards the park. But was I didn't remember was that I had taken my wedding ring off and put it in my beach chair while I sunscreened the girls. So when I moved my chair it fell out and I unfortunately didn't realize this til about 2-3 hours later, right during the mist of the "Auto" crisis. I then of course panicked and began the search. I found a man out there who had a metal detector so he helped me look for it, and two other couples plus Melissa. We looked for about an hour but it just seemed I could look forever and never find it, a needle in a haystack. Thank goodness for Melissa's mom who watched the girls for me! Well at some point I had to give up, so we headed home and I was so not looking forward to telling Jeff. Fast forward to the next day. I decided to take some "Reward" signs back out to the beach and post them with the life guards and the police department. When we got there I saw another guy with a metal detector so I headed straight for him and told him my sob story in hopes he would help me look for it. Turns out he was there the night before looking for my ring with the other guy with the metal detector and had found it! He came back the next morning hoping I would come back looking for it. He was going to post something with the police department there and put an ad in the paper. What a good man! I was so thankful and just kept crying. I wish I had a great way to thank him, but it all happened so fast and then he was gone. What an amazing answer to prayer. I was devasted to have lost it and hardly slept that night. And there you have it, our very memorable day at the beach.