IE- tabs.load

IE- tabs.load

Hello,
So my simplified javascript is:
  1. $tabs = $("#tabs").tabs({
  2.                 disabled: [1,2],
                    load: function(event, ui){
                           var total_pages = $(ui.panel).find("#total_pages").val();

  3.                        alert(total_pages);
  4.                   }
  5.            });
and the content loaded looks something like:
  1. <form name="thisform" class="thisform" id="thisform" action="{{ thislink }}" method="post">
          <input type="hidden" id="total_pages" name="total_pages" value="5"/>
  2. </form>
In firefox, everything works well and I am alerted with "5" on load.  In IE 7 (have not tried other versions), it seems it is not loaded at the point that $tabs.load is called.  Does anyone know what is going on? Even when I try to alert ($(ui.panel).find("form").length) I get a 0, indicating that what is supposed to load has not.

Any ideas?