Missing, presumed non-existent

"What's this?" I asked myself while vacuum cleaning under my bed this morning... "There are FOUR little plastic snack bowls in the set I purchased from IKEA the summer Hannah turned 1?" Like me, you may have thought there were only three-- yellow, dark blue, and turquoise.

Not so! Look at what showed its dusty self to me this morning....

Okay then, where has the little red snack bowl been hiding for three-plus years? Under my bed, apparently! I don't know how this can be, since we bought a new headboard and dressers since then and had to move the furniture and get rid of the accumulated dust. I do vacuum under the bed semi-regularly, especially when I'm missing half of a pair of shoes, which is quite often (It's easier to push an errant shoe out from under the bed with the vacuum tube than to lie on the floor and reach underneath for it, in case you're wondering.). I honestly have no recollection of the bowls as a set of four instead of three.

The most important issue about the little red bowl mysteriously appearing under my bed today is that we could have had enough matching-in-size snack containers for the four bigger cousins for the last three years rather than having to talk one of them into a different kind of cup or bowl for his or her Cheerios de colores or teddy grahams.  It's a challenge even under the best of circumstances to have four of a kind of any eating or drinking vessel clean at one time when the cousins are here. Typically when all four kiddos come, I have to remind Gpappy/Dad/Larry to use adult bowls and cups so that there are enough melamine and plastic bowls available for their use. He usually snatches one of the IKEA snack bowls or a Winnie the Pooh cereal bowl for his own purposes at the exact moment one of the kids reminds the others it's time for a snack. Oh-oh! It won't be long before Vivie and Westy want the same kind of bowl for snacks as their siblings and cousins use. IKEA, here I come.