Sweet Sixteen!

So this morning my mind starting wandering backwards... this time 5 years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago... amazing how your life and times change so much in blocks of time like that.  Then to 16 years ago as we headed to the hospital.  I had been 'about to have' Anna for a couple of weeks and she just didn't quite want to seem to make her appearance into this crazy world.  So I was scheduled to be induced.  My two pretty vivid memories of that morning came first, after the doctor broke my water, that I STILL didn't go into labor...  so we passed the time walking the halls and playing cards.  :)   Then second, them coming in to tell me that they would start me on the lowest dose of pitocin and see how that would go.... well, it worked almost immediately and suddenly I went from playing cards to full blown active labor!  yikes...  anyways, it didn't take much longer after that for Anna Louise to grace our world with her presence.  :)   I'll spare the details on that.... haha.

So today has been a bit of a 'comedy of errors,' though I have to say so far it's been more frustrating than funny.  I hope that writing about these sorts of things will mean that one day, when I look back, THEN it will be funny. 

The idea for today was that Anna's birthday present was going to be a 'car makeover.'  Of course, we didn't want her to know about it, so Jack to her to school as usual, and then turned around and came home so that he could install running boards on her car.  Then we were going to take it down to Wal-mart to have them put on some new, bigger, (cooler-looking) tires.  Meanwhile, as Jack was working on the running board installation, I was detailing the car and putting some cosmetic touches on new stickers, a new tire cover, etc. 

Sigh.

First of all, let me mention the weather.  It's been raining now for 2 days straight and it's COLD.  So there's not even a chance of a car wash or anything like that.  So scratch that.  So I put the car in the garage and started drying it off so I could put the stickers on the back windshield... then I started cleaning inside.  Jack got home and started working on the running boards... only to find that they had sent the wrong set of hardware (nuts and bolts).  grrr......    So, that completely derailed the running board project.  (pun intended - ha)    So, we moved on from that and took the car to Wal-mart to put on the tires.  Well, did you know that Wal-mart won't mount tires that are a different size from the ones you already have on the car?  Un, no, we didn't know that either.  But now we do.  And now you do, too.  :)    So no tires got put on at Wal-mart.  So we drove back home and started making phone calls and found a place in New Hope that would put the tires on.  "Yeah, we can do that in about an hour.  No problem."  That was at 9:30 this morning.  It's 1:30 now --- and yes, I'm seriously running out of time to be able to get the car back from them and still make it to the school with the car to pick up Anna.  Why is this important, you ask?  Well, because Anna is going to get her liscense this afternoon and wants to drive HER car to gymnastics tonight.  Oh dear. 

Anyways, this is where I find myself in the saga...  and I may just go ahead and post this now and let you know how it turns out later...