As I'd mentioned earlier this week, Kevin and I have been in the process of looking for a new ride, which will accommodate our ever-growing family. Well, soon-to-be growing, anyway. I did a lot of Internet research, made a ton of phone calls to various car selling individuals and dealerships, then put together a spreadsheet of vehicle information, names, numbers and addresses for Kevin to go scope them out. If he was interested, he would then drive (sometimes VERY far) the vehicle for me to take a look at.
Ultimately, we ended up looking at Lincoln Navigators, Suburbans, Yukons and the like, as long as they were large enough and had the 3rd row seat. Oh, and leather. With 4 kids, you need leather. It cleans up WAY better, and believe me, we do plenty of it in our vehicles, especially considering how often we travel with them in the summer.
Thanks to all of you who were touting your particular "breed" of minivan, but as I'd said in my last post, we had no desire. Not only aesthetically, but for practical reasons as well. Especially considering the fact that we have a rather large boat that we'll need to pull in and out of the water most weekends. A minivan wouldn't be able to do it. That, and there really isn't enough cargo space inside a minivan behind the 3 rows of seats. (And, yes, they are SO dorky...but that could have potentially been overlooked if one would have worked for the other reasons as well.)
Anyhoo, we finally found one that worked both from a pricing as well as an amenities perspective. It's a bit more of a vehicle than I would have probably thought was necessary, but the price was right, and it will work great for our needs. Plus, since I'm not the one who had to do all the "hard" work, I had to defer to Kevin's opinion on what was the best option for our needs and our dollars. We found this cute little Denali Yukon XL. It's big, but at least it fits in the garage! Oh, and we got it CHEAP! Very important, especially as we begin the whole diaper-buying fiasco.
Since we only need 2 vehicles, and Kevin uses the truck to haul stuff ALL the time, we are apparently getting rid of our most fuel-efficient vehicle...the car. It kind of makes me sad, as it is a mint car (2002 Mitsubishi Diamante) that is nice to have when one doesn't want to drive either a monster truck or a big SUV, but I guess that isn't in the cards right now. It's quite a nice car, really comfy and drives great. We expected to drive it into the ground. Darn kids mess all our plans up!
It sucks, because both the car and the monster truck are paid for, and with the new SUV, it wouldn't seem that we'd need the truck. But, Kevin's male viewpoint (and I do understand it, actually) calls for the fact that he uses it often for throwing things in...firewood, the 4-wheeler, tools and lumber, furniture, and tons of other stuff. You obviously can't do that with an SUV, and he does use it for utility purposes such as those at least 3-4 times a month.
So, as we were looking at vehicles this week, we paid for the 60-day Experian Autocheck Vehicle History 
Report. What this does is allow you to look up an unlimited number of VINs to find out any potential issues with the vehicle before you purchase it. It was $20 for a single VIN or $25 for that deal, so we paid the extra five bucks. It was great, as we considered several different vehicles, so I'm glad we did it. But...since we still have the majority of the 60 days left, here's an offer: If any of you are looking for a vehicle, let me know and I'll run the VIN for ya for free (til June 27th anyway), and email you the results. I'm happy to do so! I'd hate to let that extra $5 go to waste. ;-)
SO, back to the car. I posted it today on the Internet, and before the pictures were even approved for the ad (it took about 7 hours!), we had a call from someone who wants to come and look at it 
tomorrow! I was SO shocked. It would be awesome to get it sold quickly, that's for sure. We would have potentially traded it in, but they totally kill you on trades. They offered about $3000-4000 less than what we'd get by selling it ourselves. To me, it just isn't worth it to lose out on that kind of money. So, Carsoup it was! I sold my Maxima on Carsoup as well, and in a relatively short period of time (2 weeks), and for very close to what I had it listed for, so we were optimistic for this car to sell quickly as well. Hopefully this couple will fall in love and slap a bunch of cash in our hands tomorrow! I'll keep ya posted. I'm sure you'll be interested.
Sorry about all the pics of the car. I just thought, JUST IN CASE some random person saw this blog and wanted to buy it, the pictures would be all they'd need to make the decision to take it off our hands. Or, perhaps it was more of a commemorative goodbye to my former life as a girl who used to drive a car.
Maybe I'll ask for a Yugo for my birthday.
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