Cool, Used and Nostalgic

This past weekend we were in MN -Thursday night through Saturday afternoon-for my Board of Benevolence meeting. Friday morning we got to hang out with Sue (Jim's sister) and family, along with Joan and Dan (Jim's parents). We went on a fun walk by Minnehaha Creek before having a good picnic by a lake. I took a close up picture of a gorgeous flower-simple, but gorgeous. And cool. And today, when I uploaded the pictures to my computer, I noticed this bee flying into the flower! How cool is that!


Today we said goodbye to our car.. it has been starting to go, over the past few weeks, and last week a mechanic basically told us it was too old/had too many miles to add lots of money into it. The very next day, we began the search for our new (used) car, because the mechanic didn't recommend even driving ours very far any more. (In fact just this morning, our car was leaking power steering fluid in our driveway) We had hoped our trusty 1997 Mercury Sable would last another year, but no. We found a used (2003) Mazda mini-van we liked last week, but couldn't test-drive it until today. So today we went to Don Miller Mazda, test drove, then bought this nice, used, Mazda mini-van. Why a mini-van you may ask? We like them. We hope to have a kid... hopefully more than one kid. We will always have a dog as long as we can help it. We need more room than a standard car can provide. Maybe we're stepping out in too much faith, considering our luck in recent years, but hey.. it's worth a shot, right? It was a good deal, fun to buy a car from our friend Roy, and I love Mazda.. Zoom, zoom, zoom...


While waiting for our paperwork to be filled out at Don Miller Mazda, we took two paper bags and emptied out the Sable: papers, coins, pens and pencils, handheld Yahtzee and Sudoku games, Starbucks napkins, cassettes, etc.. Sad... Ok, not that sad, but very nostalgic, to be emptying out the car that has carted us around the country and cities for almost 9 years now. Weird. However, the best find in our stash of treasures? In the glove compartment I found this scrap of paper, in Lori Little's (went to our former church in NJ) handwriting....the paper Lori first gave to me when she told me she was soon going to be my best friend, because she knew someone who knew someone whose dog had just had 13 puppies: Golden Retriever and Black Lab mix...and with that piece of paper we began our life with Abby! As Jim said, when I showed him the find, "That was the best trip we ever took in this car." How true. Abby, you're one of the best things that's happened to us...