All last summer my husband watched wistfully when a Jeep would drive by. “I want a Jeep.” Oh man. “No, you don’t. What would we do with a third vehicle? Where would we park it? How would we afford it?” None of his answers satisfied me or sounded like legit arguments for his cause.

And then this winter it started again. And his buzzing about it turned into web searches and conversations with my brother, who is handy with vehicles everything, has a garage, and likes to go off roading. I was concerned about where this was heading. Long story short, my husband (who is great at so many other things, yet I would not add fixing vehicles to that list) picked up a very used 1995 Jeep that needed a ton of work. And so it began. He then started spending all of his weekends at my brother’s house, and well into the night. Mail-ordered Jeep parts started turning up on our doorstep.

And just like so many other of my husband’s ideas, I didn’t have faith. Shame on me. Sometimes I just get so comfortable with what I am doing, I forget to try new stuff. Thank goodness that he has a sense of adventure and has way more vision than me. I know that I get so focused on keeping the home front operations running smoothly that I fail to get out of that comfort zone sometimes. I need this balance.

So now we have this Jeep — not new, not fancy, not quite built for high speeds or long distances. But oh my God, we have been having so much fun! I’m pretty much sold on it. The doors came off two weekends ago and this past weekend we took the top off. My daughter no longer wants to ride in the car when we have to run errands on the weekend. (My poor little Civic didn’t stand a chance.) I don’t care about what my hair looks like and we’ve all been smiling a lot more.

I would probably consider myself more of a tomboy, yet not necessarily someone who’s into stuff involving motors and the like. But I do have a deep appreciation for the elbow grease that my husband has invested and would say that I am fully in support of making this thing a little more trail ready. So with that, the 33″ tires (I now know what these are) have been ordered and are going on as we speak.

So bring on the weekends and forget the chores! Let’s get out of the house and soak up some summer!