Surprise!

Regular readers will remember our many escapades with Amanda's car.  This is Karen - a 2000 Pontiac Grand Am.  Amanda received Karen for her 16th birthday - four years ago.  She has held up amazingly well, considering, but as you can see, she's seen better days.

Karen has over 180,000 miles, missing trim, peeling paint, chipping window tinting, and fewer knobs than places for knobs on the dashboard.  While she still purrs along - like an asthmatic, overweight cat - she's beginning to show her age.  And since Amanda will soon be leaving her teens years, it was time for a "big girl" car.

Enter the yet-to-be-named G6 Convertible.  I have always thought it would be fun to surprise one of the kids with a new car, and I got to check that experience off my bucket list.  

Saturday night we met Amanda at the Prairie Band Casino north of Topeka to have supper with family.  We arrived early and talked the valet attendant into letting us park the new car, complete with bow, right next to the valet lane where she would see it when she pulled up.  Then we attempted to look inconspicuous as we all milled around on the sidewalk, awaiting her arrival.

When she finally pulled in, she was so busy looking at her family perched like expectant vultures, that she didn't even notice the car with a bow - the car she had looked at and drooled over and mentioned...repeatedly.  When we directed her focus the other direction, we got just the reaction we were hoping for - squealing, jumping, hugging, grinning, more hugging, laughing, more squealing...

Of course everyone was so excited to watch her reaction, that no one got a snapshot of it.  Picture a cross between Tigger, the Energizer Bunny, and an operatic soprano, but dressed cuter. It will certainly be in our memories for a long time.  One family member commented that she didn't know who was grinning more - Amanda or Dave.  An experience you should try to have if at all possible!