zoom, zoom, zoom!

WOOOOHOOOOO!!!!! Allow me to introduce the newest member of our family- our brand new Mazda5!!!! That's right, people. After being a 1 car family for 4 whole years, we finally purchased a new vehicle.

What a beautiful sight- 2 cars in our driveway and both belong to us!

This whole thing started yesterday at about 2:30 in the afternoon when I got a call from Aaron saying that he was stranded at the Albertson's in Caldwell because the car cut off and wouldn't start again. He knew it wasn't a battery issue, so getting someone to jump it wasn't going to help. I went next door to see if the neighbor was home and could go pick him up, and even though the husband was away, his wife offered to let me use her van to go get Aaron. Well, Aaron managed to get the car going again and figured he might as well try to get it to a shop while it was running. Somehow he drove it about 10 minutes down the road to a Midas and had to leave it because it was too late for them to work on it- it'd have to wait 'til the next day. In the meantime I was calling around trying to track down a car rental place nearby that actually had a car to rent, and when I finally found one I loaded the kids into the neighbor's van and went to rescue Aaron. We got lost looking for the stupid rental company, waited for a lifetime for them to give us the dang car, then me & the kids drove the neighbor's van home while Aaron stopped at a local Mazda dealership to talk to a salesperson about financing a new car. Keep in mind, this was not something we were anxious to jump into, but just wanted to see what our options were.

When Aaron got home he had good news and bad news. The good news was that they had a top-of-the-line version of the car we were considering (the Mazda5 Grand Touring edition) and would sell it to us for the same price as a bottom-of-the-line vehicle of the same make. This meant leather interior, seating for 6, automatic sun/moon roof, 6 disc CD changer, blah blah blah. Bonus! The bad news was that we have like, no credit. Huh?! We'd bought 2 cars before. We'd bought a house and never defaulted on a single payment! Well, apparently in the grand scheme of things, this doesn't equal beautiful, solid credit. We have a good credit history, just not enough. Bah! This would mean a less than appealing interest rate. And the only way to get good enough credit for a nice interest rate would be to start paying for a dang car! All this time we thought we were helping ourselves out by paying down our debts, consolidating school loans, getting our credit score really high when, in actuality, these things don't mean squat for auto loans. You need to be making regular car payments, which we haven't been for 4 years now. How did we not know this?

After much deliberation, we finally decided that we might as well get started on making some car payments so that in a few months we could refinance and get that nice interest rate. So today we went back to the Mazda place and I got to test-drive the fancy car. Oh, it was nice, too. I was sold before I even drove it.

It's hard to believe that we've gone 4 years with only one vehicle, and many times it's come back to haunt us, especially when that one vehicle is 10 years old and tends to act like it. But when we lived in Rexburg and Aaron just worked 10 minutes away in Sugar City, if I ever needed the car I could just take him to work and pick him up. We also had friends and family nearby to help us out in a pinch. Moving here nixed that. It's been difficult for me to be basically stranded everyday- waiting until the evening to run errands and go to appointments; not being able to make impromptu trips to the library or the park with the kids; no swimming lessons for Pyper because I can't get her there; missing the ward's weekly play group because it's too far away; relying on friends to get Pyper to and from preschool. This, at last, will be no more.

Heading out for a drive.

This will be the car that Aaron drives to work everyday, which is completely fine with me. I'd much rather he have a safe, trustworthy car to get him to work and back. Oh, how nice to finally have a reliable car that we can grow into. What a relief! We're also getting a roof-rack installed in a few weeks, so when we go on trips we won't have to cram ourselves in with all our stuff. Now I'm looking forward to driving to Mom & Dad's for Thanksgiving even more!