On the Road Again!

The first time we were in the States & Ieva was old enough to know what was going on, she asked me one time upon getting in the car "Mama, why are you driving? You don't know how to drive!" To which I had to explain to her that I do, indeed, drive...just not in Lithuania!!

Here in LT, the majority of the cars have stick shifts...which I've never learned how to drive. Throughout the past 7 years I can't tell you how many times I've said that I'd learn. After all, I'm not a passive wife who would rather have her husband drive her everywhere. I'm an independent woman who likes my freedom!! ...but not enough to motivate me to conquer driving a stick. I just never got around to doing it.

We've never owned a car during the past 7 years, so this was only an issue on the occasions when we borrowed an LCC car to run errands or rented a car to go somewhere. But, in Ieva's defense, she had never witnessed me drive a car until we were back in the States.

...Until this May! One day I was riding with my friend Sanna in her '95 Volvo wagon when she mentioned that she & her husband had a new (used) car donated to them & they were thinking about selling the Volvo. I noticed that it was an automatic (so rare!) and asked a few more questions about their potential sale. Within a few weeks we were discussing our pending purchase of their Volvo, and by the time we were ready to go to our capital city of Vilnius for Ieva's tonsillectomy & my delivery of Isak, we had our own car to drive! And what a blessing it has been. As we look to the coming year balancing 2 kids & my half-time work schedule, we know that having a car will be a tremendous benefit to our family.

Since I was very pregnant when we first had the car & then recovering from a c-section for the first few weeks after, it's just been this week that I've finally driven the car!

And today I had the car to myself & drove alone for the first time -- on a warm summer day with the windows down & the music up! What freedom!!

I'm finally driving in Lithuania!! Woo-Hoo!!!