Tonight after I went biking with two of my besties, we came home to find my husband absolutely befuddled in the backyard.

Though he always takes off his rings (wedding ring and class ring) before working outside, tonight since he was only going to check something out, he didn’t change out of his work clothes or take off his rings.

And apparently, while outside, his class ring slipped off his finger.

And we have a rather large backyard. 😦

UGH. It’s like searching for a needle in a haystack, quite literally.

Complicating the situation, this isn’t just “any”class ring; my husband is a Naval Academy alumni … and if you know any Academy alums, you know they take their class rings super-seriously.

(You can read about the tradition here if you’re interested–scroll down to “class rings;” it’s pretty cool)

Our fabulous friends helped us look, and then hubby went to see if he could pick one up a metal detector at Home Depot — but they didn’t have any.

So we called around to see which stores carried them, and S. – who was almost home by that point – was a savior and went and picked it up for us, since she lives on the side of town where the store was and since it was closing in seriously like 5 minutes. (I love you both!)

When he got back, we went outside and searched for about an hour, me hunching over the lawn looking with my eyes; him waving the metal detector (I’m pretty sure our neighbors thought we were INSANE if they looked out the window) … but we kept coming up fruitless.

We knew it had to be there … but it just wasn’t making an appearance and it was getting darker and darker by the minute.

In the back of my head, I kept thinking how cool it’d be if I found it using my eyes vs. the machine picking it up … how happy it’d make him … so I channeled as much positive energy as I could!

Sure enough, around 8:45 — when it was getting REALLY dark and we were about to head back inside– suddenly there it was — the big blue sapphire stone staring me square in the eyes!!! I’ve always loved his ring (we started dating our senior year of college so he had it then) but tonight, I was ridiculously happy to see it!

“I FOUND IT!!” I shrieked.

The look on my husband’s face as he came running over … absolutely, positively PRICELESS. He was overjoyed, threw his arms around me and kissed me. I definitely felt like Wife of the Year, for sure 😉

It was the greatest feeling in the world and I just wanted to share it. And the timing was perfect because tonight he has a group paper to work on, so I’m glad I found it so at least that stress could be alleviated! 🙂

All’s well that ends well 🙂