Priceless Gifts

Emmy's birthday was a couple of days ago. She picked to go out to eat the evening before due to our church lifestyle this spring and afterwards we came home and had cake while she opened a couple of presents. Matthew realized he didn't get her anything for her birthday so he ran out of the room and came back with a picture of Tinkerbell, just for Emmy. It was so incredibly sweet. I asked him how he knew to spell Tinkerbell (he's just learning to spell phonically) and he said "I just looked at the TINKER in my 'Tinker Toys' and put BELL on the end" :) Gotta love him.

Profiting off others

We've considered buying a portable DVD player for approximately three weeks to occupy the kids while riding in the Civic. We've been looking and researching in the stores and online to compare all the brands, features and prices. Thursday I found a DVD player on the clearance aisle marked 50% because it was missing the remote. After thorough research of the materials, that particular DVD player doesn't even come with a remote! I bought it and it works great.

Actual Gas Consumption
I estimated in my last post about how much gas we would save with the Hybrid Civic in a normal month. Here are the true facts for the month of January. I filled my van up one time the entire month (at the beginning) and the gas light illuminated on the 31st. Amazing! The poor van probably feels like a rejected puppy dog right now, banished to the cold driveway and covered in frost each morning while the Hybrid gets the garage and all the love of warm bodies on each drive.
We actually used 36.5 gallons of gas for the entire month for a cost of $105. We trimmed the fuel budget by approximately $190 in one month. Now, becoming the new family car does have its disadvantages. The Hybrid obtained 1500 miles in one month!