Here She Is

Following up to this post, here's what we decided.



First, a thank you to everyone's comments about what to consider buying. We really appreciated everyone's insight regarding such a major decision for our family. Now, if you know Hudson, he doesn't do anything impulsively, including buying a car (and why should he?). Anyways, after much prayer and financial consideration, we decided to bite the bullet and purchase a 2008 Hyundai Entourage Limited. We really debated between a minivan and another SUV. We absolutely loved my Expedition and considered buying another. However, we could only get a 2006 or older version, and due to the size of our garage door opening, we needed one that had power folding mirrors...which didn't leave many options for what we felt we could afford. So, it came down to getting a new 2008 model year car with at least a 5 year warranty, or a 2006 SUV that wouldn't have any warranty, and could likely cost us more. So, here she is.




A few things sold us on this particular minivan--it only had 54 miles on it. Apparently a Hyundai dealership in Georgia closed and Carmax bought all of their inventory, which meant that we could get a brand new car, but only pay the used car price. The 2nd owner of a Hyundai still qualifies for a 5 year, 60,000 mile warranty, but we've also petitioned Hyundai to consider offering their full warranty of 10 years, 10,000 miles since we are the true first owner of this car. The lady that Hudson talked to felt confident that they would be willing to honor the full warranty, but couldn't make any promises. Second, this is the "souped up" version of their minivan, but for whatever reason was marked signifcantly below what they listed all the other Limited minivans that they are currently selling...we were told that it was because it is white. Now I'm not sure that I believe that, but hey, we were thankful. We were really excited about the power sliding doors, the power tailgate, the bluetooth in the car (so we don't have to wear our earpieces, and we didn't even know it had it until we had already bought the car), and lots of other reasons.

Anyways, we felt good about our decision, especially on the drive home. We had decided to privately sell the Expedition, because Carmax wasn't going to give us a good deal on a trade. So, Micayla and I were in my Expedition, and Hudson was driving the new car. As we drove home, my car died in the middle of an intersection. Thankfully I had the thought to not touch the brakes so that we could get through the intersection and not run the risk of being hit. I was able to stop a little ways out of the intersection, but there was no place to pull in....Hudson realized that I wasn't following as close behind and called me to find out what was happening. I told him the car died and I think he didn't believe me. Then the police came around and saw that I was having problems and stopped, and Hudson turned around and came and parked in front of us. We were able to get the car started again, took it in the mechanics the next day and they told us that they couldn't find anything wrong with her. So I don't know if it was a fluke, but we're still thankful about the decision we made to purchase a new car to replace the Expedition.

And just because her hair (if you can see it in this picture) is so funny at times (it resembles a mohawk more often than not), I had to include this picture. She's all smiles!