rhonda, i'll always love you.

Oh Rhonda.
You were such a good car to me. You were a rusty mess and you made Thomas extremely worried about the last date of my tetanus shot (spoiler! I'm pretty sure I'm due for one... sorry mama, I'll get on that..). And girl, you gave me way more years than I thought I'd have with you. Your engine was great.. but I don't think the rest of your rusty mess was much longer for this world.
I'll always treasure our midnight Kroger trips in college and how shaky you got when we hit 70mph on the interstate. You weren't the entertainer type with your squeaky tape deck, but we made it work. I credit you Rhonda for the reason I have the entire Sorcerer's Stone memorized (thank you Jim Dale for your incredible narration of Harry Potter on tape).
You moved me out of my college house and we embarked on our journey to Tennessee together. Thanks to my dad and a crisp dollar bill you were the first car title I had in my name!! What a good car. All of her two doors and squished driver seat included. Nothing but fond memories Rhonda, not once did you bail out on me and land me in the shop.

So here we are together, on our last drive.. which was out of a parking spot and to the garage. 

Very exciting. 

And of course, I made Thomas take a picture.

Leaving Rhonda-- It was more bittersweet than I thought it was going to be but I'm happy to say we upgraded and traded poor Rhonda in.. and I got all sad cleaning her out. The lady who was technically buying her from me was so great and SO funny! She even put on the paperwork for the title, "Her name is Rhonda." I loved that.

So Thomas and I bit the bullet.. we're now the proud parents of Anita!! She's a 2012 Kia Sorento and the nicest thing either of us has EVER owned.

She's super fancy and a bit of an attention seeker.. I'm in love with her SUNROOF and Thomas can barely contain his excitement over the backup camera and a car with a real sound system. We're so happy and the waiting game we played paid off. I think the only frustrating thing with Anita (other than actually stalking used car websites and waiting for her) was naming her! It was driving me insane that I couldn't think of a name-- and I wasn't about to call her Rhonda 2.0. So the other night I was gushing to Thomas about how much I love our new car and I truly don't know how I lived without heated seats before and I yelled out dramatically: I NEEDA (Anita) name for our new car! And Thomas so cleverly said.. there it is, she's Anita. And it's so perfect. We just love her!!

And because I know you're waiting on the edge of your seat, Thomas' trucks name is Stan.

Stan the man. :)