Camping Without Me

One of Elliott's best friends goes camping a lot during the summer.  Sometimes they use a tent, and sometimes they use an RV.  They are going this weekend, and Elliott is going with them.  When I first asked Elliott if he wanted to go, he was super excited.  Then last night he decided camping was going to be scary and he didn't want to be away from me for that long.  We talked about it this morning, though, and he decided to go ahead and give it a try.  They aren't going to be too far from home, and him and this specific friend are together A LOT (He's spent the night at our house at least a dozen times this summer, and Elliott's spent the night over there 3 or 4 times as well).   So it will be the perfect chance to spread his wings a little and be away  from me for two whole nights.

When I dropped him off at their house around noon, he and his friend were both so excited they could barely hold still while his parents finished loading everything up.  I bet he will have a blast!  My husband is off early today and on his way home right now, so he's excited as well.  Our last kid free weekend was the one before Elliott was born. ;)  We don't have much planned, but Carl is still looking forward to some time with no kids. 

I have a feeling I will have a harder time with Elliott being away than Elliott will.  He'll probably miss me a little at bedtime, but be perfectly happy the rest of the time.  At least that's what I am hoping.  He's already decided that if he has fun with his friend's family this weekend, he is going to convince his dad to take him soon!

We Got a New Car

On Friday we bought a new car.  We weren't without a car payment very long, but it was long enough to save up a little bit of money toward this one.  We didn't end up trading ours in either because my  husband thinks it will be easy to sell it private party and make more money that way.  There's nothing really wrong with it, other than a windshield wiper issue that my husband will be fixing this weekend.  It seems to be a magnet for rocks, though, and that's really the reason we stopped driving it much.  I just hope we don't have that issue with this new car!  We have had the Impala 3.5 years and have replaced the windshield twice, and it has a crack again.  We live right off of a dirt road, but most of the cracks happened when we were out on the highway instead. 

We have been researching cars for months now, trying to decide what we wanted to buy next.  I think my husband would have preferred it if I would have been willing to get an SUV and get rid of our minivan, but our minivan still runs great and hasn't given us much trouble at all.  Plus an SUV comes with a much larger payment than a car, especially with all the features that we wanted.  And we don't even need something that big most of the time.  We have a truck to haul things in, and only one child, so unless I'm taking a group of kids somewhere, a car is big enough for most of my driving.  So that's the main focus I've had. :)