Our Newest Addition

Last week Mike had some time off from work. We had been looking forward to it for a while since we would be able to just relax and not have much going on. Ha! Have you met our kids?? Just kidding!

Anyway, for the last couple of years Mike has been trying to talk me into buying a new car. I wouldn't have it because I love my car. I bought it a few months before we got married and it was brand new.

I remember sitting at the dealership with Mike and him telling me how he hoped I LOVED my car because I would be bringing our firstborn home in it. He said this because up until that point I had only lasted one year in each car I owned. Fickle would be a good word to describe my relationship with cars. I got bored easily!

Anyhow, I drove my beloved Buick Rendevous for four years, brought every member of our family home in it (one dog, two cats and two babies!) and loved it! All 92,000 miles. Yikes!

One day a couple of weeks ago I suddenly realized that 92,000 miles was probably not such a good idea given that we travel a lot. Sooo, I started checking out new cars and we bought one. Just like that.

It's not new but it's new to us. It has all of the features that I wanted in a car and I had the best time (not really) negotiating a ton of money off the sticker price. Mike said he was super impressed when he saw me sitting at the table with three guys negotiating the deal. So funny!

We spent all day Monday and nearly all day Wednesday at the dealership. Let me tell you how fun it was to have the kids at a car dealership waiting and waiting and waiting.

We did almost get a free car when Clay pulled a car rim over and it almost landed on him. Mike and I had no idea how heavy it was and that it wasn't secured (it was on a stand on the floor). Even I couldn't pick the thing back up and put it back on the stand. I think Clay has super strength or something. You should have seen all the guys running to secure that thing after it happened. Since we'd already been there 3 hours, I think it definitely sped up the process for getting us out the door. Thanks, Clay!

All in all, it wasn't fun but we got the job done. So we said goodbye to one sort of member of our family and hello to another.

We went from this:

To this:
We ended up with a Black 2006 Expedition Limited that had just come off a lease. My Rendevous had nothing fun but this car has some really fun stuff. I told Mike I think this car is much cooler than we are! I will be traveling soon with the babies (and without Mike) so I'm going to try out all the toys. It has a DVD player so I won't have to rig the portable DVD player up between the seats and hope it doesn't fall or shut off (fun times!).

Here's the best part: It came with Navigation- but only for California and Nevada (Vegas, anyone?). We tried to use the Navigation the first day and figured out that you have to have a CD for each geographical area. It originally came with 12 CD's but the people only turned in 1 with the car. Apparently, they lived in California considering all the prior destinations in the system were California addresses. They also loved Bank of America and Burger King based on their Search history! So now we have to wait for the dealership to get us the other CD's so we can actually use the Navigation. Bummer!

So that's how we spent the first three days of Mike's vacation. I guess you do what you gotta do! And that's the story of our newest addition. We are looking to many road trips and hopefully bringing home some more family members in it!