circle of (car) life

remember when volkswagen admitted to lying about emissions from their very popular TDI diesel car engines? you know, the engines in jettas and passats and golfs, the engines that made their drivers happy to get 40+ mpg on the highway? we had one of those engines in one of those jettas until yesterday. around the same time that david staple appeared in the washington post as "grumpy man #1" and about the same time that vw said they'd buy all the cars back, our very own little jetta started to fall apart. started to self implode. to deteriorate as a result of hopelessness and disappointment, maybe. whatever the cause, the car has been a bit of a lemon. but whatever, because it's just a car. 

so yesterday we said goodbye to our jetta when vw bought it back from us. we turned around and gave them their money right back when we bought a used outback off the same lot. it reminded me a lot of the day we bought the jetta and traded in my old aging and failing subaru outback way back in 2010. but, you know, in reverse. here is a sweet little trip down memory lane to the day in 2010 that felt oh-so familiar yesterday. 

bye bye, buddy. we had some good times. we brought a baby home from the hospital in this car. we brought home so many christmas trees, and big kid beds. we brought pets to the vet in this car, and hauled chicken feed and straw around town in this car. we've taken it skiing, camping, hiking. this car carried us all the way around lake michigan last summer and was the small home to our family for those two rowdy glorious roadtrip weeks. oh, car. bye bye.

here it is, in it's full campsite glory.


but forward we move, and it looks like it's going to be in this big silver blue beast of a wagon, or SUV, or whatever these giant outbacks are called nowadays.