Three months after my husband left me with almost nothing, I spent my last $10 on 33 porcelain frogs for my daughter\u2019s eighth birthday.<\/p>\n
Amy loved The Frog Prince<\/em>, so when I found the entire collection at a garage sale, I bought it.<\/p>\n That night, one small frog fell and shattered.<\/p>\n Inside was my third-grade school photo.<\/p>\n On the back were five words:<\/p>\n \u201cBreak the biggest frog first.\u201d<\/p>\n We did.<\/p>\n Inside the largest crowned frog was an old brass key, a map, and a picture of me with my late father.<\/p>\n The map led us to a small cabin near a lake.<\/p>\n The key opened the door.<\/p>\n Inside were photographs of my childhood\u2014and documents showing something unbelievable.<\/p>\n The cabin had been legally mine since I was eight years old.<\/p>\n My father had bought it for me.<\/p>\n The woman from the garage sale was his cousin. She had protected the property for years because she could never find me after my father died.<\/p>\n The timing couldn\u2019t have been better.<\/p>\n My husband was trying to argue that our motel room proved I couldn\u2019t provide stable housing for Amy.<\/p>\n Now I had a home.<\/p>\n A deed.<\/p>\n And a door he couldn\u2019t lock me out of.<\/p>\n Months later, Amy pointed to the cracked crowned frog on our shelf.<\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t replace him, Mom.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhy?\u201d<\/p>\n She smiled.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s broken\u2026 but he still gets to be the king.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Three months after my husband left me with almost nothing, I spent my last $10 on 33 porcelain frogs for my daughter\u2019s eighth birthday. Amy loved The Frog Prince, so when I found the entire collection at a garage sale, I bought it. That night, one small frog fell and shattered. Inside was my third-grade …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9851,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9849"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9849\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9850,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9849\/revisions\/9850"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}