End of February

It has been so warm!

We've spent quite a bit of time outside, which most of the kids thoroughly enjoy.

Rose combines a great love of the outdoors with the requisite very little sense of a toddler. So when she is outside, some responsible person  has to be on her all the time. The others are wiser. Even Daniel, who is closing in on being 5 years old, is much safer than Rosy Posy.

I have a funny story about a dead opossum.  I hope it is funny.  

Kevin shot one of the possums that eats our cat food a number of weeks ago. It managed to stagger around to the back of our house before it expired.  Then it lay there in freezing temperatures for a couple of weeks, which wasn't too charming. But we weren't outside much.

February 13th was a nice day, so I heroically scooped up the possum with a shovel and took it to the back 3 acres and threw it into the brush.

That WAS heroic. I don't do dead animals well.

So then, after I tidied the corpse into some brush, some stupid predator found it and dragged it onto the mowed path in the back!

I refuse to cope again with it, since it is now half eaten.

Yuck.

So now it will just stay there 'til the bugs finish it off.

I hope that wasn't too disgusting.

Maybe it was.

Sorry :-).

In other news, cars.

I drive a 17 year old minivan. Mostly it is fine.  I mean, it runs well.  It doesn't break frequently.

Kevin and I tend to replace things when they break.

The ancient minivan isn't broken.

But still, we are saving up for a nearly brand new, maybe actually brand new minivan this year.

It is a struggle mentally as it will be an expensive purchase.  Part of me thinks we should just wait until our minivan dies. But another part agrees that one with new safety features would be nice.

And a new minivan would be nice. It would be.

I'm a saver, to the point that sometimes I don't spend when I should. Not that I'm a Scrooge like miser.  I do spend lots of money, definitely. Big purchases are painful for me, though.

Kevin's oft repeated statement is correct, that money is a tool.  So we should use it appropriately.  That doesn't mean just letting it pile up in a bank account when we have a good reason to buy something.

So probably sometime this year, we'll have a new or nearly new Chrysler Pacifica in our garage.