Life as we know it ...: Making progress . . .

Okay! . . . our home is finally paid off! Hooray!! This is a "first" for both of us and we love it!

Then there's Mark's new Expedition. After that teenager ran into his earlier one he was NOT happy. But now he is! Since his Expedition couldn't be repaired after the accident, our new insurance company (USAA) paid him enough that he was able to get another Expedition exactly like the one he lost. Well -- not "exactly" . . . It is the same year, the same color, the same style (an Eddie Bauer) as the one he had before, but now, instead of the 195,000 miles he had on the old one, this new one has only 113,000 miles.

It has brand new tires and the interior is absolutely immaculate. The single thing that's not as good about the new one is that it doesn't make that noise when he backs up close to something like the old one did. But he's going to put in a back-up camera. And I got him a GPS for Christmas so he'll be adding that to the new one as well. And it's even better than the GPS that's built into my Ridgeline because his not only gives you directions, it also lets you know about current traffic problems so you can stay out of the way! And it's almost as large as mine is, too.

As for me, I'm about to get my Ridgeline updated as well. The front bumper on it isn't fastened in correctly. It keeps sticking out (see the picture below) and I have to keep pounding it back in every day. So when I went over to see about getting it fixed, they said they would need to replace that entire front bumper. But they also told me that those bumpers only come in black and then it would cost another $600 to get it painted white! Uh -- NOPE! Frankly, I like the idea of that entire front area being black -- that way if I get any ding on it again it won't be noticeable!

You can see that the front bumper on my truck extends all the way up to the hood. And since the lights and everything on it are already trimmed in black, it seems to me that having that bumper entirely black won't be a problem at all. And that way there won't be any more noticeable black scrapes on there in the future either. And hey -- if I decide it doesn't look good black, I could always go to someone else and have it repainted white down the road sometime -- no doubt for less than an extra $600! But I doubt that I'll ever want to do that.

We haven't done much except hang out at home all this week after all. No visit to the puppy parade last weekend. (I do have a couple dozen photos taken there that I'll post when I get a bit more time.)

And we didn't go out to dinner for Valentine's day as we thought we might. But hey - we did have dinner last weekend with Jan and Mike - that was more than sufficient. Oh - and when we went over to their place, Jan gave me this shirt that I absolutely love --