So she's now driving . . .

That's right.  That girl o' mine has . . . a driver's license.  It's real!  It didn't come out of a bubble gum machine or anything.  Since she is now a newly licensed driver of just one week, when people find out, they ask her about driving all over and her car and . . .

She does not have her own car.  You see even prior to the replacement of both adult vehicles in the house in all of 8 months, we discussed having her drive with us for a year before helping her to get her own car.  She understood and agreed.  We told her that we wanted to have her experience all of the seasons prior to setting her off all on her own in her own car.

It's not to say that she hasn't taken trips in my vehicle.  It's not to say that the reality and gravity of the responsibility freaked her out so badly that she decided that she did not like driving by herself.  Period.

The local library saw her three days in a row last week.  It was important to set her off on her own and not to let her continue to hang out and be stressed out.  I sent her a few miles away with Life360 powered up to monitor, she still checked in, took care of business and came back.  Our agreement (at her suggestion which seems completely reasonable) is to have Life360 running on trips out on her own, but to shut it down when she gets home because we know where she is and when she is at school, she is at school.  It's a freaky thing to run with a GPS continually monitoring your moves, so I get completely where she is at.

I phoned our lovely local insurance agency.  Goodbye good insurance rates.  Oh yes, they went up $1000 per year because my sweets is driving our fully insured vehicles rather than a mobile heap with liability only.  :insert stressed out mama face and budget crunching calculator:  As a good consumer (who hates to do it after how well they handled this past year) we will be just shopping around for some new insurance rates.

But . . . kiddo is driving.  She won't be driving friends around.  Before reality hit, she wanted to make a solo drive to Cleveland.  She's got it in her.  She could do it easily.  We did it with her several times.  Still . . . K needs to still hang a bit more local.  She's got it, but mama ain't good with letting go all the way just yet.