It was one of those days – you know one of THOSE days.  Things just didn’t go all that great. 

It started with the fact that I stayed up late baking muffins last night (when I would have rather been sleeping), mainly for my oldest who had his first day of school today.  He took one bite this morning and told me they were disgusting.  NICE.  At least my hubby liked them.   I got him dropped off & settled in at school & headed home.

I did homeschool with Christian, which actually went much quicker/smoother today.  I knew it would!

Then Ryan got out at 11 a.m. today, so it was back to pick him up, and we were off for the hour drive to the nicer grocery store (that is another post for another day – why I drive an hour to the grocery store now..)  But ANYWAY…

From the moment we got in the car Ryan was mouthing off to us.  We were a bit down the road and Matt asked him to change his attitude and apologize to me, and well… he wouldn’t.  So…  we had to pull over the car to, ahem, discipline him.  My kids only get spankings a couple times a year (and yes, you can either love me or hate me for that – whichever is fine) and well, today was one of those days.  Anyway, got that done and we were on our way again.

We grabbed a quick lunch at the Arby’s drive-thru and headed to the grocery store.  Now.. I need to back up a minute.  I had wanted to print my grocery list before we left (I make it online at www.cozi.com) but Matt had unplugged the printer the other night to work on some network stuff.  Anyway, my printer would not print and we were in a hurry, so he said “just send it to my phone and we can shop off my phone”  (he has one of those Fancy Schmancy Blackberries that cost like who knows how much ($400?) and do everything you can imagine for you.)  Okay great.

So we get in the store and I say “Hey honey, bring up that shopping list for me.”  And he reaches to grab his phone… and no phone!  So he figures he left it in the car.  So I continue with my shopping (with 2 carts & 4 kids – because. well, 2 kids wanted to ride in the cart and with 2 kids in the cart I have no room for groceries…)  So Ryan pushed 1 cart, I pushed 1 and all was good.  As I was adding produce to my cart a “kind” lady comes up to me and says “My goodness, You have more children then you have groceries – Sheesh!”  Oh my goodness, it is a good thing this lady moved away quickly because I just might have let her know my opinion about her too!  Instead I said, “Thanks, and my husband is actually here to help me, he’ll be right back. and gave her a nice kind smile.”   But seriously, why do people think they need to rudely comment about the number of children people have?  It’s not like they were out of control or anything, they actually were being very well behaved.  I don’t mind nice comments like “oh your kids are so cute, and they all look alike!” (because they do), or even, Wow, 4 kids you have your hands full!  (because I do) But if you don’t like how many kids I have…  sorry!  But honestly, you don’t need to tell me your opinion. 

Okay, so at this point Matt returns to the store with….. no phone!  It is now we realize that most likely his $400 Blackberry is on the side of the road somewhere in the country between home & the grocery store & neither of us remember exactly where we had pulled off…  A lot of the fields out here look all the same, and I was reading recipes on the way, so I wasn’t really paying all that much attention to my surroundings.  Great… just great!  And… of course to top it all off, we have now just driven an hour to the grocery store with no list! 

So, I shop from memory the best I could (I forgot 9 things). 

On the way home, we drove slow… looking for anything that might look like his phone.  And it actually has a Blue Tooth Connection that connects to our car, so he thought maybe, just maybe, that would connect if we got close to it and we would be able to find it that way.  Yeah… no such luck.

So we unloaded all the groceries, and Matt went back out for another hour to search.  I fed the kids and we got ready for football.  He got home with my car just in time for football, with…. no phone. 

At this point he had some thoughts as to a couple areas where he thought it might be.  We discovered that when you call it, voice-mail picks up in 4 rings instead of 1.  This means that it is not ran over, & is in service, because if it was off, voice mail would pick up in 1 ring. 

I drop the kids off at football and ask my friend if she would bring them home.  I called Matt and told him that one of us could drive and call the phone and the other could walk along the side of the road and see if we hear it ring.  I figure it wasn’t all that likely, but worth a final ditch effort. 

However, while I was driving home from football, Matt had talked to AT&T and found out that they have a family finder program.  Essentially it is for parents to track their kids to make sure they are where they are supposed to be.  But… it might help us!  So.. they set this all up and we were so excited!  Only to find out… they sent his phone a text message to confirm the subscription… Um yeah…. that doesn’t really help much.  So, Matt called back and ended up setting it up on my phone, but since we have a family plan, it would work for his phone also.  So, we log online, and push a couple buttons… and wait… and wait… (I’m sure if you saw us, you would have totally been laughing as we were staring at that screen waiting for the magical map that was about to pop up!)  And viola!  There it was!  A map to his cell phone – on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere.  It said it was accurate up to 12 yards – pretty good, I must say!

So we were off- on a treasure hunt!  We had a pretty good idea where we were going, and plugged it in on our car GPS.  Oh, and I must mention… on the way, I had to slow down for an AIRPLANE… Yes a crop duster flew right in front of my car!  Anyway, I pull over and put on my flashers and Matt starts walking the ditches while I call the phone.  He had gone a little ways when friends from church drive by and stop to help.  LOL  They had walked probably 1/2 a mile down and I was thinking that was probably a bit far according to the map from AT&T.  So… I got out and looked, and low and behold it was about 5 feet in front of the car – right near the road.  If I had pulled up any further in the car, I would have probably ran over it!  (And I’m shocked we didn’t run over it when we pulled out initially. 

So, the phone is found, and boy were we happy.  What a crazy day!  I’m hoping tomorrow is just a bit more “normal”. 

C-

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 25th, 2009 at 8:44 pm and is filed under The Menu Mom Chit Chat. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.