My "New to Me" Car

 This is the car I raised my kids in for the last 10 year.  There have been many precious memories made while driving in this car.

 

I've been driving the Tahoe for almost 11 years now.  I've loved my tahoe ever since we bought it, but with 3 kids of my own and tons of friends kids in and out over the years it has sure taken a beating.  Back in January I started looking at newer cars.  I even left Kendall with a friend one day and spent the entire day test driving every version of the GMC Acadia,  I drove the Chevy Traverse, Saturn Outlook, Buick Enclave, and the Acadia.  I drove the FWD and the AWD, ones with captains chairs, ones with bench seats some with leather some without.  I went over to a friends house a few days later as she owned one already and tried putting 3 car seats across the back bench.  They fit!  So I started watching different sites, checking dealers web sites and just generally watching what they were selling for.  Then one day I noticed one down more in my price range.   I took the 3 small kids with me leaving the big boys at home for a short while and went and drove a Saturn.  I liked it but it had a bench in the middle and hauling around 6 kids on almost a daily basis a bench in the middle was going to be hard to get around.  I really wanted the Captain's Chairs.  I told the Guy what I was really looking for and he walked me around to a few other cars.  Finally he walked me over to this one.  And it was close to being in our price range.  As he was moving cars around so that I could take it for a test drive I called Zach who was busy and couldn't get out of work.  The dealer let me load the kids in and drive it for the rest of the day :)  Of course he was hoping I would totally fall in love with it and keep it.  I had told him what I was willing to pay for it and he had laughed.  Little did he know that I was completely serious and wasn't going to budge.  I was able to take it home and look up all the numbers so that when I went back in to the dealer I knew exactly what I was talking about.  He was getting close to my offer but was still around $500 over what I had told him I was willing to pay.  His boss noticed him stressing out and walked over.  He asked what's the hold up.  I told him $500 if they didn't want to come down then here were the keys and I was leaving.  He told me fine that he would come down and the car was mine.  I told him I would be back in the morning with my husband to sign papers.  He was a little annoyed that I wouldn't sit down and do it right then, but we had kids to get places.  The next morning we said good bye to the tahoe and drove off in our "new" acadia.  And I've loved it ever sense (May 2012)

Here's to new memories.