It all started Valentine's Day 2007, when Sean gave me a cell phone. I loved my phone a little too much, and had lots of fun adding pictures, custom ringtones, etc. I enjoyed my favorite new toy every day until it disappeared on Christmas Eve. The weather was terrible, and I was headed to a family party at the church by Hillcrest School. I was alone and trying to figure out the safest route to get the van up the hill, so I called Sean while on my way to get his manly expertise on safe driving routes. I must have set my phone in my lap after I hung up, because unbeknownst to me, it fell out in the parking lot. The party was so much fun that I didn't notice my missing phone until Christmas Day when we were about to make the "Christmas Day Local Grandparents' House Tour". I searched everywhere in my house and every square inch of my van. Nothing. Maybe it was lost inside the church somewhere. Nope. It must be in the parking lot, but the snow had been freshly plowed! Aaargh! Who plows snow out of church parking lots on Christmas morning? My cell phone was gone! We narrowed it down to the most likely snowbank where it could be, and it was a big one. Sean continued to call the phone over a few days until the battery died, and then we got serious and borrowed a metal detector. For a few more days, Sean would diligently visit the snowbank and pass the metal detector over it, but no such luck. In the meantime, John & Destiny loaned me an old phone of theirs (which, by the way, arrived in the mail on my birthday and was a very welcome surprise). I definitely enjoyed having a phone again, but it was just not the same. I couldn't bring myself to personalize this phone like I did my other one. (I'm a little too attached . . . it's just a thing . . . I know). When the weather warmed, we would pass by on our way to Sunday dinner, look for evidence of the phone, but always find nothing. Well, it was an Easter Sunday miracle, because we drove by yet again on our way to dinner at my parents' house. And there it was--all covered in mud and sitting by the now smallish snowbank in the corner of the parking lot. I leaped joyously out of the car, ran to my phone, and grabbed it! We were reunited! But I was sad, because it had been frozen and melted in a dirty snowbank for 3 months, and it wasn't going to work. Well, Sean proved me wrong. He cleaned off the mud and dirt, disassembled it, and dried it out. And, believe it or not, it actually works! My phone has been reborn on Easter day. We have been reunited, and I am very happy, indeed. The next holiday is April Fool's Day--what do you think will happen then?
