Wedding/Engagement Ring Drama

I have some really good pictures from last Friday when me, Henry, my dad and my sister went to the Columbus Zoo.

But before I post those, I have to tell you what happened after we left the Zoo...

I am now 3 months pregnant (well, kinda... there's a slight debate about this with my doctor, but more about that later), so my hands started swelling after about four hours of walking around. I took my wedding/engagement ring(s) off (they're welded together) and put them in the top compartment of the stroller. I also had keys, a zoo map, cash and napkins in there.

Right as we were getting to leave the zoo I ran to the bathroom and checked to make sure that my ring was still in there. It was, so I asked my sister if she wanted to wear the ring home for me since she has a slightly skinnier version of my chubby, short fingers (P.S. thanks, Dad, for the ugly man-hands).

She declined, so I tucked the ring back in its home, went to the potty and then we headed out to the parking lot. This was around 3:45pm.

I found my car (I wasn't paying attention to where I parked it when I came in) and started unloading. A woman pulled in next to me and we started chatting. For some reason it stuck out in my mind when she was saying to herself and her son that she parked in the second row of "B". I unloaded everything from the stroller, tossed it all in the back seat, got in the car, cranked up the a/c and headed to Panera to pick up Dustin (he had been studying there all day). We were in a bit of a hurry because we were having dinner with both of my parents and my sister to celebrate my graduation.

About 5 minutes before I got to Panera I remembered that I hadn't looked to make sure I had put my ring in the backseat of the car along with all the other papers, maps, cash, etc. I wasn't too worried because I figured it was in the backseat or still in the stroller compartment.

Once I got to Panera I told Dustin to help me look for it. We looked pretty closely in the backseat and in the stroller. Nada. I drove home in a complete and total panic. We pulled into my Dad's driveway and tore the car apart. Nada.

It was about this point that I was pretty sure that it had went flying in the Zoo parking lot when I had grabbed everything else out of the stroller compartment. I wasn't paying a lot of attention because I was chatting with the lady in the car next to me.

We postponed dinner, left Henry with my Dad and I drove like a bat out of hell back to the Zoo. Dustin was probably carsick the entire way.

Funny that the only reason I remembered where I parked was because the lady next to me had mentioned it. Dustin and I got to the spot, got out of the car and split up to look for it (possibly a foreshadowing of what was to come in our relationship if I really, truly lost my wedding ring).

Did I mention that I cancelled the insurance policy on the ring a year ago because I thought it was too much money ($112 per year) to shell out per year when nothing was going to happen to it?

I'm not gonna say how much the engagement ring is worth... but it appraised for more than double what Dustin paid, but even it didn't -- we still wouldn't have the financial means to get another one any time in the next few years. (We have student loans to pay off thank you very much.)

So I started looking around for it. It was a lot like looking for a needle in a haystack.

It took me about 4 minutes before I happened to glance over to the right and saw the sunlight dancing off the diamond about three parking spaces away from me.

Amazingly, I found my ring laying in the parking lot of the Zoo almost two hours after I left. Thank the Lord!

I screamed to Dustin when I found it. Both of us were SO relieved and SO happy.

I have since purchased a fake wedding band at Target for $16.99 and I have happily retired my real ring to the jewelry box. I will wear it once the baby is here and I'm not a puffy mess.

Do you have insurance on your wedding ring? If not... GO GET SOME.