Oh Shoe-t.

Yesterday I had a lot of errands to run.
I try to pack all my errand-y things into one day, because I am a winter hermit, and the sun and fresh air hurt my lungs and eyes.

So yesterday was errand day.

I got almost everything done, all but the grocery store.
I figure another day of Ramens and a Flintstone vitamin are not going to kill the children.

Speaking of the children:
And killing them...

I was on my way home, and Shianne (mom #2) called me on my cellphone to check in.
"We are all home now. Everyone is fine."
"Great! I am on my way home, I will be there in about ten minutes."
"Oh, mom, you should probably know," she said, "Mikayla lost her shoe walking home."

What?

Last I checked, the school is literally ten minutes from our front porch. The roads have melted off, leaving her a straight, dry shot home.
How is losing a shoe possible?

Shianne continues: "We were kinda piddly-dinking on the way home, and we were playing in the big snow piles."

(Big snow piles= rock hard ledges of snow that the snowplow has piled up on the sides of the road.)

At some point, from what I gathered, Mikayla's foot broke though the crust of a snow drift and her shoe came off. I am not sure how their Kindergarten and Fourth Grade educations failed them at that point. And why it was so hard to STOP right there, reach a hand down into the HOLE IN THE SNOW and retrieve the shoe, but apparently that wasn't possible at that juncture.

She skipped (unevenly) home in a shoe and a sock.
This is Utah WINTER, people.

I made them march right back to the snow piles and dig around in them.

Mikayla has two good pairs of shoes right now.

Her patent leather Mary-Jane's she wears to church.
And these shoes.
Well, now shoe.
Not plural.
Not cool.

The shoe was never recovered.
I have always wondered how sometimes, I will be at Costco, or the mall, and there will be a worn and random shoe sitting in a cart, or displayed high on a post as to alert the owner, and I have always thought "what kind of idiot loses their shoe?"

Now I know.

And I also understand why some creatures in the animal kingdom eat their young directly after birth.