the newest member of our family

Although I'd love to tell you that we got another cat, that, unfortunately is not the case- and there will be no more Hydorn babies unless God chooses to play a little joke on us : ) , but I am very happy to welcome this one into the fam- an Oldsmobile 88 for Bradley!

For those of you who don't live in Iowa, our state allows 14 year olds to get school permits- yes, drive to school ALONE!! Now, that never seemed like a big deal to me... until MY BABY turned 14. And he certainly didn't seem old enough to drive, let alone drive ALONE somewhere. Thankfully, he turned 14 last January, and we were having an awful winter. There was no way this anxiety-ridden mother was going to let my baby drive for the first time on icy snowy roads. So he had to wait until spring break to get his permit. His dad is much more relaxed and at ease when Bradley's behind the wheel than I am. He encouraged him to drive whenever the opportunity allowed it (which is good- I just can't take credit for having the same attitude!).

Any of you parents know that being an on-call taxi service takes a lot of time. Between all of his sports practices, school activities, early morning agilities, student council meetings, etc, etc, etc, I was soon looking forward to him having his school permit. And I was feeling more comfortable with his driving abilities.

Having just built a house, extra money is not exactly rolling in at the moment. And we had a limit for what we wanted to spend... which was not a whole lot. I don't feel a brand new teenage driver needs an expensive car that could likely be dented up in the Indianapolis Speedway  school parking lot. 

He finished drivers ed at the beginning of Dec. and we got the school permit over Christmas break. It was nice for him to be able to drive the van to his 7 AM practices during Christmas break so that I didn't have to get up!!!

He turned 15 on January 7. And on January 8, we got lucky and found this guy. We have a trusted used car place that we bought our Buick at. Several of our friends have purchased from him, and trust him. We drove through the lot to see what he had. We spotted an older Buick and took it for a test drive. It was OK and would have been perfectly acceptable for his needs. After we brought that one back, the salesman pointed this one out to us. It was only $500 more, much cleaner, only 78,000 miles, and drove wonderfully. We were sold.

Bradley was thrilled and shocked when we drove up with it. Not a chick magnet by any means, but it's a nice solid, decent sized, well priced vehicle that hopefully will last into his college years!!!