RIP Sporty....Welcome to the Family Civic!!!

So about a week ago my jeep died on me...and sadly I don't mean needs a jump and it's back up and running we are talking died to the tune of a few thousand dollars to fix....It is 9 years old with 139,000 miles on it so it was a tough call what to do. Luckily, since I'm convinced we are two of the most blessed people on this earth, we received a generous donation from the family I work for which enabled us to head to the used car lot last Saturday and add a 2008 Honda Civic Hybrid to our family of cars. The used car lot gave us $1000 for the jeep (and towed it off Mr. Tire's lot) which impressed us and the employees of Mr. Tire.

The jeep was my first car I ever owned so it was definitely a bittersweet moment for me with quite a few tears. We have had a lot of great memories with the jeep and since I plan on eventually publishing my blog as a memory keepsake book for Kris and I, I'm going to take this time and re-live some of the highlights of Sporty's life!

I bought her when I was fresh out of undergrad, 22 and at the time did not actually have a job (I was hired a few days later...) the next two summers I had soooo much fun driving Steph and Ethan (the first family I was a full time nanny for) around to pretty much every place you can imagine. Also in there was when I moved to Delaware and I had the jeep packed to the gills with my stuff. Her first big road trip was heading down to FL to see Dustin's (my boyfriend at the time) sister get married and come back...we did that trip in less than 48 hours total (including the wedding) because I wanted to be back for Father's Day...

Then while I was at Delaware our graduate quartet happily discovered that my jeep was the perfect size to fit all 4 instruments plus 4 big black music stands so that way when we played gigs we only needed 1 car instead of two. The quartet (both years) had a lot of hours logged driving to various gigs and lots of good and funny conversations took place.

After Delaware when I moved to Baltimore my parallel parking skills skyrocketed and for a while I could back Sporty into almost any spot...

Of course my number one fondest memory would be our Honeymoon since she safely got us from Pittsburgh to Amelia Island and back to DE/MD...I did leave the pom-poms on the front and one survived until the bitter end...I definitely cried taking that off!

Since then Sporty has been safely transporting Jake and Brooke everywhere we want to go, although since the air conditioning has been broken for the last 9 months the kids weren't too sad to see her go! I do have to add the jeep had died a few times in recent years (although always easily fixed) however Jake will never let me forget the time Sporty died in the morning on the way to work and the kids (plus Tracy) had to come rescue me...that in and of itself is not unusual...what was memorable is that it was Pajama day at one of the storytime's we go to and I had actually gone out and bought myself a pair of PJ's I could wear in public so the kids and I could all be comfortable....Needless to say my Tow Truck driver that morning was a little confused since I was clearly wearing PJ's but kept talking about getting to work....Now our daily driver is the Prius and Kris has the Civic.

Here are some pictures of the jeep before she was towed off (I will go back later and add some of the wedding ones when she was decorated once I figure out where they are...!)

 

 

See the Pom-Pom survived!!!

 

 

 

 

 And now our newest addition to our fleet..................

We had some great memories with the jeep and can't wait to see what is in store for the life of the Civic!

Spring Break with the Kids!!

So hopefully I should be posting a bunch of stuff soon (ie easter...a concert Kris and I went to...a passover Seder I was invited to...) but I figured I would start with Spring Break week (which was the week before Easter) and all the fun the kids and I were able to have!! (and yes I sadly know I'm about a month behind...sorry!!!) 

So we started off the week with a visit to Clark Elioak's Farm which is a farm/storybook forest type place down here. They have tons of storybook characters along with plenty of slides and animals. While we were there a little goat was born...I didn't get a great picture of him but here are some cute pictures from that day:

Brooke with her favorite princess!

Brooke at what she kept calling "Snow White's Well"

Next we headed to our new favorite place, Great Kids Village. It's a new HUGE indoor play place that has just about everything a kid could want from inflatables to a real firetruck to costumes galore and a huge sandbox. We actually went there twice that week and the second time we met one of our friends, Riley. By far Jake's favorite thing there is dressing up a like a knight and going in the castle that has a ball pit. Brooke of course is fascinated by the princess dresses :)

Sir Jake of Elkridge, Sworn to protect the honor of Princess Brooke

Our traditional Friday play date friend, Riley!

Our last big adventure of the week was the Howard County Public Library Easter Egg Hunt and Carnival at the Elkridge branch. They had everything from face painting to games and of course the Easter Egg hunt. I was very tempted to go for the face painting myself but I restrained...this time at least!

Jake as Spiderman and Brooke with a sparkly Boots (from Dora) on her arm

Brooke got distracted during the Egg Hunt...

And thus concludes our fun Spring Break week! It really ended up being a blast and has me very excited for summer when we can have more fun adventures.