He once was lost but now is found

Slumbers was missing for a few days this week. We were pretty sure he had to be in the house somewhere, but we'd torn the place apart looking for him and he was nowhere to be found. I was feeling the way I used to feel when one of the cats didn't come home at night, and Hope was starting to sleep with "Soft Slumbers", as she's named the back-up bear we got for just this situation. We assumed he'd get lost when she was little enough that we could just switch and she wouldn't know the difference. Now she knows there's two of them, so it just wouldn't work very well. And with Naomi's tendency to put things in the garbage, the fact that the girls have been playing on the back deck the past few days, and that we'd gone several places that Hope might've taken him, we were afraid he might be gone for good.

But last night I saw a box of books in Hope's room that she rarely plays with. Naomi plays with it alot, so I checked in case she had crammed Slumbers in it. There he was! I actually had tears of joy in my eyes when I saw his little face poking out from between the books in the box. He may not be as soft and snuggly anymore as he once was, but he's still Hopey's baby.