Riley's 16th

You would think it would be pretty hard to "mess-up" a 16th birthday. Unfortunately, Riley's birthday take 1 did not go so well. We were told by the DPS that Riley had to have a Verification of Enrollment form to get his DL the Monday of Thanksgiving break. The schools were closed so we had no way to get the form. On Monday the 29th Jeremy took Riley to school and begged the receptionist to fill out the form. Her reply "it's not possible"! Seriously all we needed was her signature, but I guess if they start that everybody would come last minute. We finally got the form at 2:30 so I take Riley out of school and we head straight to the DPS. By the time we get there it was too late and we had to schedule a drive time for Tuesday. We hand over all of our "needed" paper work and as the DPS guy starts looking through it he hands back the VOE form because "we don't need it". I kind of freaked out and I quote "what did you say?" in a not so nice voice. We waited all day to get a form we didn't need which took so long that he missed getting his DL on his birthday. Little did we know that was only just the beginning with our birthday issues. Jeremy and I started looking for a car about a month early thinking that would be more than enough time. We looked at A LOT of cars all with no luck including one that smelled like cat pee. That was a treat! I almost threw-up before we could get it back to the dealer. As his birthday drew closer we were starting to lose hope on actually finding one, but the Friday before we found a Scion TC at the Ford dealership in Grapevine. It had just been traded in so it was dirty and in need of some detailing, a tune-up and paint touch-up. We both liked the car and knew he would love it so we bought it that night. We were promised that it would be ready Monday morning...and so the story begins. Of course it wasn't ready even though we were calling and driving up there almost hourly. It wasn't until Monday early evening that we finally got through to someone willing to really help. At this point we had a kid with no car and no driver's license on his birthday...awesome! Luckily I had figured out Riley thought we were getting him an iPhone so we told him that his gift would be delivered a day late. Birthday take 2...we let Riley stay home on Tuesday because we had to go take his driving test and as soon as we heard the car was ready we picked Bailey up so she would be there to see him open his gift. Jeremy told Riley that he picked the gift up from UPS so we wrapped the key in my old iPhone box letting him assume he was right until he actually opened it up. He was speechless!! It was so much fun for us to give him his first car!!! So we all drove to DPS so that he could take his car once he passed his test. It was all fun for me until he drove away. As we're walking out for him to drive away I asked if I could ride. Of course he said no, but Bailey could. I give a little speech on how other than his dad he now has the two things I love more than anything in this world in a car and drive safe and...."I know mom". As they drive off I cry and cry again every time he drives off for about a week. In Jeremy's words "a little piece of Jill's heart drives off every time he drives away".