Seat warmers

With this new baby on the way, Josh and I discussed the need (eventually) to get a bigger car, you know, one that would fit three car seats?

We started to talk about what type of vehicle we wanted.  Top of my list was a Honda Pilot.  I love the look of them, I love how they’re not a minivan, I love how they drive (Mom & Dad have one).  I think it was Josh’s first choice in a vehicle too, but I had one catch:  I didn’t want to spend more than $10k – $12k on any vehicle and when the time came, we had to pay cash for it  (Dave’s rules).  Josh thought: well, good luck with that!  Used Pilots can sell for much, much more and even though we’d been saving over the last 10 months or so, we didn’t have that much saved yet.

We hadn’t even begun to look for any vehicle – we have months and months to prepare before the baby comes and in the meanwhile, we were very much enjoying paying low rates for car insurance with our existing cars.

Skip ahead to last weekend.  I was setting myself up for a boring weekend because Josh had to work on Saturday.  Saturdays feel like just another weekday when he has to work.  Not much fun for the kids and me.  By the way, Josh works as a service advisor at a car dealership.

But this Saturday was different.  Josh called me from work fairly early in the morning.  A salesman there had told Josh that a Honda Pilot had just come in to the dealership on trade-in.  The best news was that they (because of Josh’s employee status) were asking thousands less than what we wanted to spend (eventually) on a car.  Josh was very excited and very interested right away.  There was already another employee who wanted to buy it and two customers who were prepared to buy it.  Since Josh has worked there longer than the other guy, and because employees have first chance (at least on the used cars that come through), Josh would have first crack at it.  He had his team of technicians look over the vehicle very thoroughly.  They noticed a few minor things that would need attention in the next several months, but nothing immediate.

This car was a 2004 model that was very clean inside and out, one owner who had done regular maintenance, the reason why it was priced so low was because it has a fairly high number of miles on it.  But that didn’t scare us away, especially in Josh’s line of work.  So we went for it!  We pulled the trigger.  Not something I would have normally done, but it was just too good of a deal to pass up.  Josh had a good point, too – we didn’t want to get 3 weeks away from our due date and be forced to buy something we didn’t really want or pay more than we wanted.

Luckily we decided early in the day, because I was able to run to the bank before it closed to get the title to our old car out of the safe deposit box and deliver it to the dealership.  We traded that baby in and got a great deal for it, too.  It was a good run for that car; we had bought it used from Josh’s parents four years ago. 

Finally, when Josh came home from work, I saw my new wheels and got to drive it for the first time.  The nicest surprise?  As I headed down our street, I noticed my rear end warming up!  Seat warmers! What a nice bonus – my favorite – especially in this cold weather we’ve been having. 

I can’t wait to drive somewhere!  Road trip, anyone?  Sorry, no pictures yet.  With all the snow and gunk on the roads, it already needs to be washed again – did I mention it is black?