I can't believe three weeks have passed since I last updated. My time has been consumed by a few different things that have required more of my full attention during my few moments of down-time.
There was preparing (and stressing over) a talk I gave at a women's conference for church about a week ago. While I definitely learned a lot and gained some new perspectives from my studying and preparations, I'm so relieved it's now behind me. Thankfully the nightmares of showing up without a talk prepared have also ended, too!
Then, there's the car-searching. Marc jokingly commented today that I've roughly spent $2000 worth of my time in searching for our next car. Not sure where that figure comes from exactly, but I think I have to agree! We've been really close to sealing the deal with three different cars and three different sellers, but for one reason or another all three have fallen through.
The most recent was just this weekend. And, it was the closest we've been to finalizing everything. We found a car we really liked and we got the price down to something we felt more comfortable with. We got a loan approved and got all the other necessary paperwork prepared from our credit union to take with us to the dealer yesterday. As of Friday night at 10:30pm we were all set to have our new car home with us the next day.
Then, just before coming to bed Marc did some searching online about the most common complaints/problems with the specific year of the car we were about to buy and found that the number one problem was a very expensive one (like $7000 expensive) and one that, according to other owners' experiences, could possibly happen with this particular car within the next three thousand miles.
Our discussion led to other concerns about the car in general and its ability to meet our family's needs, lasting until sometime around midnight-thirty. In the end we decided we didn't feel good about buying the specific car we were set to buy, nor about buying that make/model of car in general. So, the search has started over from step one, but we feel so much better about the direction we're headed in and feel like we gained some real clarity from our almost-buy. I'm just hoping the real deal will happen in the next few weeks, so the nightmares will cease of not having a car big enough to bring my baby home from the hospital.
Since we had made plans to have my parents watch our boys yesterday while we bought our car, we decided to keep that in the plans and spend the morning together. It kind of just happened to work out nicely that it was also our birthday. We drove an hour away to the next biggest city where we visited a friend in the hospital, enjoyed some retail therapy at some of our favorite stores, and found a cute little Italian place that served us some of the best pizza we've had in a while.
And, if that doesn't sound like the perfect way to spend a birthday, it gets even better. We ended the day with dinner out with my parents, where the boys thought we had possibly died and gone to food heaven. Ben was so thrilled to have his pick of eating whatever he wanted off any of the plates sitting in front of him, while Hugh couldn't get enough of my pasta and Marc's fries.
With over-stuffed tummies we still ended the night with a three-layered chocolate cake with a nutella-based frosting that I made the night before. Although, between the six of us, we barely ate the equivalent of a single slice, which means lots of cake for tonight and the next few nights to come!
All of that to say, life is busy. Life is good. And, life will be even better when we have our new family-sized car found and bought and ready to hold three precious bundles of joy we get to call our children.
3 comments:
Wow! Lots of busy-ness. Good luck in the car buying. It seems like such a major money commitment. I'd be interested to know what you decided not to buy. Our first van we call "Richardson's Folly" because it caused us a lot of grief and money at times. But now at 12 years old, it's actually still going strong after a lot of times when we thought we were on the verge of selling it and moving on. You can only do what you did - do what feels right.
Happy birthday and again, good luck on the future purchase!
Sounds like yo had the perfect birthday! :) You'll know what to do when the time is right and the car is right! Once again, happy Birthday dear friend, who I have claimed as my little sister!! Love ya!
Oh that makes my heart happy to read about you two having such a good birthday.
And by the way, take it for what it's worth, we have bought our last two cars (Dodge Grand Caravan and a Chevy Colorado) from the church. We get the old, used missionary vehicles that they sell at 50,000 miles - you just have to get a hold of the person in the mission office who is in charge of vehicles. We've had the van for 4 years with no problems. We just got the truck and had to do about $30 of cosmetic repairs due to crazy 19 year old boys, but other than that, so far, so good.
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