Driving Lessons

Two years ago, when I started my first (now defunct) blog, I opened with a story on how we'd own nineteen vehicles in our (then) 5.5 years of marriage. At the time he'd just bought two-wheeled vehicle number nine, a Honda Nighthawk that I really liked. But I did wonder if nineteen vehicles in less than six years was normal...

Since then we've bought and sold at least a half dozen more. It's not really special any more. At one point there were more than ten motorized vehicles who lived here (and no, we're not dealers or anything. Just junk collectors).

The Nighthawk was sold and replaced with a smaller Nighthawk. The Moped was sold and replaced with a bigger moped. But it was sold to Chester's brother, who also lives here, so it stayed, until he sold it a couple of weeks ago (he replaced it with a Honda Rebel). The van was totaled and replaced with another van, The car was sold in an attempt to minimize, but then replaced with a pickup, which was then sold to another of Chester's brothers (who also lived here) and later replaced with another Honda Civic (this time a hybrid that was wrecked and Chester fixed up). And the saga goes on.

Today, though, we graduated into a new class of vehicle.



And the kids got their first driving lessons.


(If you're wondering why in the world we would buy a tractor, it's for mowing and tilling and the like at our newest house).

Painful Garage-Saling

I think I've done a rather effective job of brainwashing my kids in some areas: They all love to garage sale. Yesterday morning was a special treat -- one of the best church rummage sales I've ever seen.

Bennet brought his own money, and very quickly made the decision to use it to buy a skateboard.



After we had him cleaned up from "trying it out", they gave it to him free.