The Nomadic Koerbers: I Traded in My Mustang for a Minivan

One of my favorite Andrew Peterson songs, "Family Man," starts out with these lyrics ("I Traded in My Mustang for a Minivan") to show how his life has changed since becoming a father. Well, I've never had a Mustang - and we still don't have a minivan, but I had a somewhat similar experience this past weekend. Though I'm definitely not a world-class mountain biker like my cousins, I still really enjoy getting out for a ride every once in a while. However, I also want to be able to take Caleb along with me on more leisurely rides - which meant attaching a child bike seat to the back of my bike. Since the seat we got at Goodwill isn't super easy to take off, this has effectively changed my "Mustang" bike into a minivan. Though I am excited to be able to take Caleb with me on bike rides now, it is undeniable that I am now the owner of a "daddy" bike.

As the "Family Man" song continues, he talks about the various ways his life has changed since becoming a father and some of the things that he has had to give up (including his Mustang). In the same way, I can see the numerous ways that having Caleb has changed our lives and made it a little more difficult to do some of the things we've enjoyed doing. With our five year anniversary coming up, it is definitely a lot more difficult to get away just the two of us. Last weekend, we did have the opportunity to take Caleb with us and return for the first time to the area where we spent our honeymoon nearly five years ago. Needless to say, it was a much different experience but it was also a lot of fun to hike a bit with Caleb while revisiting the memories we had of our time in the North Georgie Mountains. Though it is sometime easy to idealize the freedom and spontaneity of out lives before Caleb, I definitely feel that I can echo the conclusion of the song that though "this is not what I was headed for when I began, this was not my plan, It's so much better than." Anyways, I've included some recent pictures/videos below and you can go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIOczph6nQE if you want to listen to the song.