Car Shopping

One of the biggest tasks we had to accomplish/decide before we could make the trip home was regarding the car. Just before Christmas, the insurance company called to inform us our car was indeed totaled (umm...DUH!). We had a small amount of rental car insurance we could use.

So, we weighed the options. Use the rental insurance to get home and then buy a new car. Or use the legendary babysitting services available at the grandparent's house and buy a car in Rochester. John and I decided to look at cars in Rochester to see if we could narrow things down a little bit. It was unbelievably helpful to have Grandma and Grandpa around to watch our tornado during this time. Otherwise we have a scenario that looks a lot like this:


One of us asks a question
Car salesperson responds
William runs away
One of us has to follow him
Anywhere between 10 -15 minutes elapse when parent returns with William in tow
William starts wiggling/whining
Parents try to catch each other up. Difficult to hear over the increasingly loud protests of the lap restrained William.
Repeat several times
Leave the dealership with sore muscles, headaches and frustration over not knowing all the answers to the questions asked or if you missed something important during the tantrum.

So, very very helpful to have willing and economical babysitting available to us. While shopping we quickly determined that we needed to look for vehicles in the minivan class (shock! horror! us! A minivan!). Neither one of us is at all interested in owning another SUV at the moment. In the end, I fell madly in love with a Hond@ Ody$ey. I would have made out with this van in the parking lot if it would have made any price difference for us. But it didn't. And, the Toyota Sienna had an almost identical feature list with a price tag close to $5000 less. We negotiated, I cried, and John did research. Apparently a LOT of people are in love with the Sienna (Consumer Reports, Edmunds Review to name a few - I'd link you, but I'm lazy. Maybe you'll get lucky and John will come back in and hook you up).

You all know how the story ends: we drove home in a 2009 Toyota Sienna. And it is lovely. I'm still trying to get over my torrid imaginary afair with the Ody$ey so the Sienna can have a chance. It hasn't swept me off my feet yet - but to be fair, I haven't really given it a chance. The previous love affair aside, several things are holding me back. First of all, this is a brand new car and I didn't really get to pick what color I wanted. We were hugely limited by time and the features we wanted in our van. The features narrowed the search down to ONE vehicle on the lot: silver with a gray (leather!) interior. Not a bad choice, maybe even what I would have picked if I someone had handed me the rainbow and told me to pick. I'm just a little crabby I didn't get to pick. The second issue was the financing. The financing was just short of a nightmare. We started the paperwork on Tuesday afternoon. Close to four hours later, we walked out of the dealership without a car and a tired, hungry, crabby baby (I thought the shopping was the longest part, not the part where you write a check and walk away with keys). The next morning we spent an additional hour at the dealership working on things on top of close to 2 hours of time on the phone with the bank/dealership. Two days after we started the process, we drove home in a van that wasn't completely ours.

We started the financing on 12/30/09 and we didn't actually complete the financing until 1/2/09. I will be fair and throw in the fact that the first was a holiday with both the bank/dealership closed - but still! Totally a stressful experience when I was imagning having to somehow get the vehicle back to Minnesota because things didn't work out.

So! That is the whole story! It is done! It is all good now! And...this a little piece of what William was doing with Grandpa and Grandma while we were out!

Building track races with Grandpa

Eating snowman ice cream with Grandma after dinner (I'm also informed that he cuted himself MANY cookies during this time also. The key? He has learned the all important word: please)
Ice cream, what a treat!
Rocking with Grandpa while reading books or watching a little TV
Trying to walk in Grandma's shoes.