So much for that parenting theory

In an effort to teach the boys a valuable lesson about taking care of their possessions, and the worth of a dollar, they have been saving for months to buy a Nintendo DS. They saved birthday money, allowance, and the very generous payments from the neighbor for taking care of their pet hamster (Bruce--short for Bruce Springsteen). Finally last Monday I went online and ordered them a DS. It arrived on Tuesday with much excitement and fanfare. They didn't actually have any games to play on it, so we used the doodle pad to play hangman...$110 to play hangman seems a bit extreme. On Wednesday they borrowed a couple of games from the neighbor. This went well for a couple of days. By Sunday morning the DS was missing. They took it in the car when we went to Lowe's and it hadn't been seen since the ride home. I cleaned out the car after bringing home all of the plants (64 of them). Today I went through the garbage to see if I inadvertently tossed it while cleaning the car. It wasn't in there. We spent awhile looking for it today, but to no avail. This afternoon Samuel went to the neighbors to play and guess what he found sitting on the retaining wall in between the two houses? Yep...the DS. So, I'm thinking that perhaps this was a parenting theory gone bad.