We're all mad here

What do you do when your 8 year old son steals from you, gets caught red-handed, and then persists in denying the whole thing? Really, I wish I had more visitors to my blog right now, because I am just at a loss!

He took a Ring Pop off of my nightstand, crawled into his closet, and ate it. I don't really eat candy (except for gummy grapefruit slices - YUM!), but this particular piece of candy was a gift from my husband. He gave it to me after a long schpiel about how he was looking to buy me some jewelry, but couldn't afford anything else, yadda yadda. It was cute, and funny, and sweet, and my boy took it, and ate it =[

The kids knew that it was mine; I had carried it around for several weeks in my purse, and they always asked for it, and I explained that it was too special to eat (and why, tho I don't expect first and third graders to understand sentimental value).

My daughter came to me, saying that she had seen Isaac in the closet next to my Ring Pop wrapper. I called him out, his face was BRIGHT BLUE (Blue Raspberry, my least favorite candy flavor). And he stood there in a tiny sad voice repeating over and over, "I swear I didn't do it. I didn't eat it. I swear I didn't do anything." Riiiight. I asked him to explain why his face was blue. "I swear I didn't do it."

I sent him to his room for the rest of the night. Now, I'm not anti-spanking when it comes to major things, and I think that stealing, and continually LYING about it, is pretty major. But, at the same time, I don't think it is effective for teaching my son anything. Grounding him has never worked, either, though. I'm just at a complete loss as to what I should do here. It's rare that when my kids screw up, it actually hurts my feelings. I wish I knew how to communicate that to him in a way that he would really understand.