Shelby's birthday

Brooks family

Today is Shelby's 8th birthday and we will be going to Red River this afternoon to celebrate with pizza and cake. It is so hard to believe that she is eight years old! Jamie is so excited, he's been talking about her birthday since they were here over Labor Day. Jamie and I wrapped Shelby's gifts today and Jamie told me how he was going to unwrap lots of presents and blow out the candles. I tried to explain that Shelby gets to do those things today because it's her birthday and that he'll get to do those things when it's his birthday. We'll see if my words made any impression. Nevertheless, he has it in his mind that we're all going to hide and say "Surprise!" when Shelby walks in the room and he thinks that's pretty cool. I think he has a book about a surprise birthday party for Thomas (the Tank Engine) so that must be where he got that idea.

We finally got the Explorer back yesterday. YAY!!! I'm so happy to have my stick shift back. Nothing against automatic transmissions but I have ALWAYS driven a stick and I have missed it. Our poor Explorer has over 200,000 miles and there have been a couple of times that we thought it couldn't be resurrected but, it seems to keep hanging in there. We had to replace the water pump over the summer (much better than the blown head gasket that the local Ford dealer diagnosed) and this time we had to replace the clutch...again. This is the second clutch since February and at least the seventh one in the 10 years we've owned the car. I love my stick shift but this clutch has given us major grief. We are lucky, though, that the mechanic we've used since living in Alamosa now is the Auto Shop instructor for Alamosa High School. We get the same quality work that he's always provided but now we only have to pay for parts (he can't charge labor). What a deal! To his credit, this is only the second clutch that he's put in.