Proud OWNER

Of a '97 Kia Sportage! We went and picked it up last night and I LOVE it! So far the only things that bug me are the fact that the steering wheel has quite a bit of give to it (I can wiggle it around and still be driving perfectly straight) and the clutch bounces a bit (but a friend said he could fix that for me). Otherwise, it's great!!! We took it out so I could practice and in the space of about 35 minutes I killed it twice and peeled out once. But I drove it home from the back roads! I told Steve I think I'm going to drive it around the block several times to practice starting and stopping. I have a hard time going from neutral to first gear. But I am confident that I'll get the hang of it!

Jordan cracked me up all evening yesterday. He and Steve got to my house and I asked Jordan to come inside and check out his new car seat. I wanted to put him in it before I strapped it into the car to see if he is still small enough for the 5-point harness or if I needed to take that off and just use it as a booster seat. He's still small enough, yay! He was sitting in it and saying, "Wow, Kaila, I love this seat! This is pretty cool. Thanks for getting it for me!"

When we went to pick up the car I opened it and let him climb inside and he was sitting in all the seats saying, "This is a cool car! Kaila, I love your new car! This is awesome!" He charmed Dave (the guy selling it to me) and was going on and on about his animals and his garage, being an honest 6-year-old. "Why would you want to have a dog and a cat at the same time?" Dave replied, "That's a good question!" Jordan also told him, "You have a big garage. There's a lot of stuff in your garage. You should clean it up." Dave told him that was good advice. For some reason Jordan thought it was my parents house so he kept getting confused but I finally told him they were friends, not my parents and that sometime I would take him by my parents house and show him (which we've done before, but he doesn't remember).

On the way back to my place it was just Jordan and I in Steve's car and he was jabbering away. "I love my new car seat, Kaila. And I love your new car, it's so cool! And I'm gonna be seven on my next birthday and we're going to Chuck E. Cheese! And I loved my birthday party, thanks for the treasure hunt!" He was uber thankful and it was making me smile.

Steve took me out for a driving lesson and Jordan stayed with my neighbor for about an hour. Jordan totally looks up to Kyle and thinks he's so cool (of course he does, Kyle's 22 and will wrestle with Jordan all night!). When we left they were all coloring with chalk out back and when we came back I opened the car door and all I could hear was giggling and squealing and yelling. I opened Kyle's front door and sure enough, Jordan and Kyle and Ali were all wrestling on the floor.

Look, he can walk on the ceiling!

Apparently the guys convinced Jordan that he has super powers. Ali had a laser pointer and wherever Jordan would look, Ali would point it. Jordan goes, "I just don't know how I'm doing that!" Then later he was sitting on the big chushy couch and was sinking into it and he goes, "I'm just a regular boy, I don't have any super powers" and Kyle said, "But you're disappearing!" sending Jordan into another fit of giggles. He loves those guys and Kyle has fun with him so I told Steve, "Hey, maybe we should take advantage of this now and then and go on ice cream dates!"

I woke up totally happy today. I own a car, I have two baby showers and a wedding to go to next week, and I've gone to bed "early" three nights in a row. Tonight we're going to Pizza King with a friend of mine and her little girl so the kids can play and we can eat. Steve's brother and his fiance are doing karaoke so we'll hang out for a couple of hours. I'm looking forward to that.

Tomorrow is Friday! I tell you, this has been a LONG week.

And I've been sneezing for three days.