New Car

So, I spent my birthday week at my parents' house with Samantha and Spencer. And Brian spent a few days camping and hiking with his brothers. When we got back together, we decided it was time to really get serious about buying a car.

We were staying at Brian's parents' house those first couple weeks, borrowing their car or truck for our errands. This was not easy on them, I'm sure, though they were more than willing to help us out -- we're soooo very grateful. So, for several days in a row it seemed like our pattern was:

-- look on craigs list at cars and furniture stuff
-- call on the stuff and sometimes go see it (and rarely buy anything we saw)
-- take the kids and go to car dealers
-- test drive cars
-- come home and talk about all the cars and furniture
-- look on craigslist again, sleep on it.

It was so hard to decide what we wanted and needed. We vascilated between a smaller sedan and something with a bit more room. We finally decided on a Toyota Sienna minivan. It's gold. It's roomy. It gets good gas mileage. It has an automatic sliding door. We've already put 3000+ miles on it. It's durable. It's a Toyota. We really like it. Even me. But I still call it a car, not a van or minivan or anything like unto it, just fyi.

Here's the lovely gold mobile, for posterity's sake...
And here's Samantha (note the green goggles -- oh-so-pretty!) and Brian (note the lawyer's poker face) at the dealership, signing the papers for the deal...

We bought it just in time to test drive it on a week-long trip to the Oregon Coast. It past the test with flying colors. It was a GREAT asset to the trip, just for how comfy we were the whole time. Pictures of our happy Oregon time are coming up next. Stay tuned!