Piper Sees All

This Christmas, we spent the holiday with Adam's family, which was a nice opportunity for me to see my niece Piper and my nephew Riley. Ann (their mother) and I agreed to share stocking stuffers between the four kids. My contribution to the effort was a box of chocolate-covered gummy bears for each child from the local candy store.

Adam's brother Matt posted the following dialogue on Facebook today:

A transcript of a conversation with Piper this evening:

Piper (eating Chocolate covered Gummy Bears): Um, it was nice of Aunt Mandy to give me these gummy bears.

Matt: Yes, it was. You know what? I think she loves you.

Piper: Yeah, but sometimes she is silly too.

I'd say it isn't bragging if it's true, but ... well, this would be a pretty silly thing to brag about.


Well, the sands of 2009 have almost run out, but that's okay, because early in 2010 we can expect to get --

A NEW CAR! No, we didn't win it, and, no, the Honda Fit would probably not be my first choice, but it is on the top of our list because the money we have spent in home improvements over the past couple of years has pretty much limited our options. The one question was, did we want the manual or the automatic transmission?

Well, we were pretty sure we wanted the manual, but for some reason our local Honda Dealership could not seem to keep them on the lot long enough for us to test-drive one (and by "us," I really mean "me" -- Adam has pretty much left me in charge of car-vetting.) Finally, today I managed to catch them when they had one on the lot ... but they could not guarantee that it would still be there at the end of the day.

You know what that means ... Backseat drivers.

I have never taken the kids with me on a test-drive before (of course, last time we bought a car, we only had one kid). It was about what I expected.

First ... I had to stop the car, climb in the backseat and take Xavier's shoes off so he would not leave muddy footprints on the back of the driver's seat.

Second, I thought the gear shift was kind of noisy, in a clicky sort of way, but it wasn't too irritating because I could hardly hear it over the kids screaming at each other in the back seat:

Gwen: Get out of my face, Xavier!

Xavier: Gwe-en! But you start--

Me: Do you guys want me to drop you off at Daddy's work?

Gwen & Xavier: Waaaaaah! We don't want to go to Daddy's work!

Xavier: ... but she started it!

Finally, when the kids quieted down from that little spat, Gwen went on to more traditional backseat driving: "Are you going to crash? I'm worried you are going to crash. Are we almost done yet, because I am really afraid you are going to crash."

The good news is, I think the Honda Fit Manual will work out for us (clearly there will be more than enough noise in the car to block out the clicking of the gear shift.) The bad news is, that particular Honda Fit will not work out for us, because it is orange, and that is a color Adam is not willing to live with. Oh, well, at least we creep forward another step ...


On that note, Happy New Year! I know 2009 was good for some of us, not so good for the rest of us, but, nevertheless, I hope that 2010 is better for ALL of us!