Eli's sandals

These are Eli's cute summer sandals. At the beginning of the summer, they mirrored one another in every way: shape, color, snazziness. But recent events have caused one of these shoes to look a bit...different. Can you tell? The sandal to the left is somewhat deformed: wider, flatter, scrumblier.

 

 

 

If you look even closer, you might notice that the shoe on the right has a pleasant repeating pattern stamped into the rubber sole.

 

 

 

However, no such pattern exists in the shoe to the left, almost as if it never existed. What could have caused such a transformation? Well, let me tell you a little story.

 

 

 

Last month we took an impromptu quick car trip to Riverton, WY. Joseph has been called to several job interviews this summer, and this time we thought we might join him! Somewhere on the drive there, we lost Eli's sandal out of the car! We searched thoroughly, but it was gone, and the next day we had to go buy him some new shoes. They are pretty cool- blue with lights- but now he didn't have snappy summer sandals anymore. Poor Eli.

While Joseph went to his interview-there were three candidates, he felt he did well, he still didn't the job- we waited at a local park. It was one of those fancy ones where the whole community contributes. You know the ones, where they have a maze of rooms and structures planned by the kids who live there, then they put the names of all the businesses that contribute money. There seems to be one in most bigger towns these days, and they all look very similar.

While I waited for Joseph's return-after I had played for a while with Eli and decided it was way too hot-, I drew these girls that were sitting outside of the structure. Yes, I thought the grass and the parkinglot were more worthy of a drawing than the elaborate playground. Or something.

So hours later, we were on our way home. (Yes, I'm getting to the shoe part.) It was a beautiful day, and we were headed north on the highway between Casper, WY and Gillette, WY. As we came around a bend in the road, the setting sun filtered warmly through our car windows and I was enjoying the slow transition of the sagebrushy part of Wyoming to the grassy northeastern part that was similar to the landscape of our home.

All the sudden my lazy reverie was interrupted by Joseph shouting, "There's Eli's shoe!!" I gaped at him incredulously as we pulled over, turned the car around, and returned to the side of the road where a dirt road split off to the right. There at the entrance to the dirt road, was Eli's cute little sandal! It was a little flat, and smooshed, but it was wearable!

24 hours later, we had found the shoe. I did a drawing in the car as we continued on our journey, to commemorate the reunion of Eli's footwear (I colored it later at home):

 

 It turns out, on our way south the night before, we had stopped at that road to let the little boys go potty. Usually we wouldn't even have opened Eli's car door, but at the time his arm had been twisted in the harness of his carseat, so we had opened his side to make adjustments, at which point the shoe had fallen out.

We're so happy we found it!
Too bad he likes his new blue shoes better.