New Driver

Alex got his driver's license today! Anthony was already seventeen years old and in his senior year in high school when he got his license. Alex wanted to get his license "before" Anthony got his, so with his birthday a little over a week away it was time to take his driving test. The Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) website was confusing so he and Patrick spent some time filling out paperwork that they didn't need in the end.

Alex took his test at one of the relatively new super centers but the phone system designed to reduce wait times failed them. Instead of 40 minutes from the time they registered to be "in line," it ended up being an hour and 20 minutes and ran into the appointment time for his driving test. In the end, this didn't matter. It was just a long visit to the DPS office.

Patrick watched Alex do his parallel parking during the first part of the test. It was good, but not as nice as several nights ago when they went to the testing center after hours to practice parallel parking. After the test, the person giving the test said Alex lost some points for not watching for traffic on side streets closely enough but that Alex was doing a good job driving. Alex is happy he has his license, and he doesn't really realize it yet, but we are thrilled that we have another driver that can help cart people to various events.

I took the picture shown above after we celebrated with dinner at Grimaldi's, Alex's choice. The 2004 Lexus RX330 in the background is my old car that the boys have learned to drive on and that Alex now has the use of. As soon as Patrick added him to our car insurance policy ($3400 more per year--ouch!!), he took off for his friend Jeremy's house. Jeremy has been driving Alex around for a couple of years now, and he told Alex that when he got his driver's license, he needed to drive Jeremy around in return. Watch out, San Antonio! There's a new driver on the loose!