The Golden Ticket

We took the kids to Chuck e Cheese's last night and as usual, they never get tired of it. There is just something about that place in the kids hearts...
Anyways, what reminded me was that sometime last year, we had gone to Chuckee with the kids and there is this 'Extreme Cards' Booth where the kids sit in front of the camera and their picture gets printed on these credit card sized card with Fashion Diva or Skateboard Pro or CIS investigator or  something like that.. if you get the idea... And my kids have spent a great deal of time and coins over that. They collect these cards. So one time, R came upto me and showed me an unusual card he got from there. It said 'You have Won the Golden Ticket' and on the bottom it said that that card could be redeemed at the counter for 10 tokens. It may not sound like a big deal but it sure was a big deal to my kids as this was a rare card!
Upon seeing that card, N demanding the same one. Which of course is not in my hands.. so when we were ready to go home, N's chin was almost touching the floor with remorse and regrets..
When we got home, hubby asked her to read two Rakats of Salat-ul-Hajat and make duas to Allah SWT for one instead of crying over it.
It did take her a couple of days to get that portion done..We went again the following week. The first hour passed, no golden ticket.. the second hour passed.. still no golden ticket.. and then it was time to go home..
With a sad face she looked at me and told me if she could try one last time.. I gave her a go and went along with her, making duas that she hits the score.. She put the token in and to our surprise, the machine said that it was out of cards and need to inform the staff. She looked at me with a thousand questions and I told her to go inform one of the staff members to refill the machine. Slowly but surely, a person came with a few pack of cards to refill the machine. I started chit chatting with him and told him the story about the golden ticket. I asked him to see if there was a golden ticket in the pack of cards he had. He was kind enough to go through the stack of cards mumbling that there is probably just one in a pack of 500 to a 1000. I was persistent and so was he. Finally he found the golden ticket after a few minutes of searching, put it on top of the pile of cards and loaded them into the machine and asked N to go ahead and insert her coin into the machine. Sure enough, N followed directions and once the picture was taken and the card printed out... saying :  'You have Won the Golden Ticket!!!!'


That made her day and my day too!! She realized the power of Salat-ul-Hajat! (So did I)