It had to happen sometime...

Hazel got lost. Only for about five minutes but it was rather worrisome for me.

We were shopping tonight at Cabela's for various items for the desert trip (an almost annual Wall family trip to Moab). We were finally done (the store had officially closed about 10 minutes before - we were getting a LOT of stuff so they were REALLY nice) and letting the kids look at the big fish tanks. Jacob started toward the register with the cart and I stopped to show Kathy (Jacob's sister) a hat I had been looking at. When we started to follow Jacob a minute later, Kathy asked if I had seen Hazel follow Jacob. I hadn't, so I called ahead to see if Jacob had her. He said no, I went back by the fish tanks - no Hazel.

Kathy and I started check the nearby aisles because we'd only had our eyes off her for a minute and still no Hazel. At this point, we'd attracted the attention of several employees who got on their headsets and radioed around to see if anyone had seen a little blonde girl in a pink shirt.

It was at this point that I had my 5 - 10 seconds of heart-stopping, crazy woman-brain worry. I am VERY glad it wasn't any longer than 5 - 10 seconds. One of the employees said she'd been spotted by the sleeping bags, so I headed back there. Still no Hazel. Then I ran into the very helpful employee who works in that area who said he was the one who found her and he'd taken her up to the front. He walked me up there and said that he'd recognized her from when we were in his section looking at the sleeping bags and figured she'd wandered off (as she had many times tonight - we'd just usually realized it before she got far) and so he'd taken her up to the front.

And there she was, just chilling at customer service with the lady who helped us pick out some new binoculars (yes they are cool but that's not what this post is about). She hadn't even cried apparently, the silly girl. So we hugged and I had them page the rest of the family members who were looking so we could regroup to go buy our stuff and go home. We sat down to wait and Hazel asked to get off my lap and the first thing she does is try to run off again, the little stinker!!

Anyway, all's well that ends well and we purchased our overflowing cart of items and headed home. It was a very successful trip if successful means spending lots of money and lots of it on stuff that wasn't on the list. But we love camping and we are VERY excited for the desert trip!