Nevada

It's one of the 50.

I think Andre Agassi is the only famous person from there.

Oh and Vegas. Vegas is there.

Other than that, there's nothing too special about that place, it's mostly just a bunch of worthless land that the government owns.

All it does is fill up the space between California and Utah.

Unless...

It's missing. Then there's a big empty spot on your puzzle. We had already lost the New Hampshire / Vermont piece from the east coast. But it was just a little piece and I'm thinking it still might turn up. Somehow, despite Nevada's insignificance, we are really missing that state. You see, Jack plays with this puzzle all the time. He takes them out, rebuilds the puzzle on the table. He lines them up, smallest to largest, largest to smallest, sometimes by date admitted into the union, sometimes by population. --Not kidding. I noticed Nevada was gone a few days before our first scheduled trash pick up. Now it was trash pick up day, Mike and Ty had just left to take a load of stuff to Good Will.. About eleven o'clock Jack came into my room. He said:

"Mom, can you come help me find Nevada? It's in a box in the garage."

The boxes that had been filling up the garage were no longer there. A few of them were on their way to be donated and the rest of them were here:



And they were full.

"Jack! Those boxes are at the road for the trash person (sounds so PC doesn't it?) to pick up!"

"Will you come help me find it," He pleads.

"Are you SURE it's in there?" Because I want to be sure it is before I have to put on day clothes and go digging through my own trash in front of neighbors I don't yet know.

"Yes, it fell down in one of them when we were playing last night." Jack responds.

I'm such a sucker, or an awesome mom. You pick.

"Jaaaack..." I groan... "Yes, I'll come help you look."

I carefully look through box number one. It's like a needle in a haystack. I almost quit right there because of the odds that are against us.

Box two contains a whole lot of white packing paper.

"Jack, was it in a box with paper or a box with other stuff?"

"hmm... I don't know." He replies. He's not going to be much help now is he?

I dig through the box.

Box three. Nothing.

"Jack," (Now's as good as any time for a lecture, I decide.) "You shouldn't play with puzzles in the garage. It's so easy to loose pieces.

From hearing all of our adventures in life, you probably assume we don't have a complete puzzle anywhere in our house. That is where you'd be wrong. I'm a puzzle NAZI! One deployment Hannah and I built a huge shelf for the playroom to store the kids toys on, we refer to it as: "The Puzzle Shelves" Because that was what we had in mind when we built it. My thoughts are you might as well throw a puzzle away if you can't keep up with all the pieces. I get them out a couple at a time and only when the situation is controlled. Some people have gun safes, I might one day own a puzzle safe.

I'm pretty sure I asked God to help us find the puzzle piece. (Why do I care so much? I guess because Jack cares so much.)

"Jack, do you think the piece is on top or way down in the bottom of the box."

"I heard it go 'tink, tink, tink, tink,' all the way to the bottom."

Ok, well that's something.

I keep digging. Box 4, 5, 6, 7,8...14, 15.



I get to the end. Nothing.

"Did the piece just fall in?" I ask, getting slightly annoyed at the situation.

"No, it was playing 'hide 'n seek' and I hid it in a box."

I groan...What a terrible idea...

I go back to some of the boxes I had already looked at but been a little less thorough the first time.

Still nothing.

"Jack. I think it is lost. Let's stop looking."

I thought about calling Mike and asking him to please comb through all of the boxes he had with him. But I didn't.

That was it.

For the next two weeks every time I looked at that puzzle (which lives on top of the puzzle shelf in the big boys room) I was sad about poor Nevada.

Yesterday we did the finishing touches to the garage.

Looking good isn't it?



See that one brown cardboard box in the middle of the floor? Mike has been asking me for days to please go through that one and decide where that stuff goes. I make it happen.

You'll never guess what was in the bottom of that box.




God cares.

This proves it.