Ooo, new car!

New cars are exciting right?  Well, yes and no.  You have a brand new toy to drive around and get used to, but, at the same time, you just spent a lot of money.  Steve and I just spent a lot of money.  It was kind of a necessary evil.  We bought the car for two reasons: we needed a vehicle with more trunk space and we needed a vehicle that could easily fit two car seats in the back seat.  We looked a minivans and trucks mostly.  I wanted a Sienna.  I really wanted a Sienna.  However, we would need to buy one used because they cost a pretty penny.  While I can totally live with a used car, it just depends on how used it is.  The 2009 we say was pretty used.  Things were already falling apart, like a piece of the passenger seat door armrest.  And it had an old, crusty french fry on the floor.  I was quickly turned off of that van. 

We also looked at Kia Sedonas.  Kia is known for having cheap vehicles (in both senses of the word), but the Sedona got some good reviews and had good crash test ratings.  Well, Steve really thought that van was a POS when we test drove it.  Not to mention, it was just as much as a new Sienna.  Where's the value in that?  It didn't take long to nix the Sedona off of our list. 

The other car we looked at was the Mazda 5.  Now this is a mini minivan.  It seats 6, but not very comfortably.  So where is the appeal.  If you aren't going to haul around extra people all the time, you fold down those back two seats and you have loads of storage space!  Another appeal is that the two middle row seats are captain's chairs.  They can be moved forward or backward for however much space you'd like to have and they can lean back for napping as well!  For us, that's where the car seats go.  We can push the seats back to leave more room for the rear facing infant seat.  Something that appealed to me was that the Mazda 5 isn't a big car.  It's between the size of a Toyota Camry and Avalon.  I know this because my mother and sister have these cars, so I could compare.  I like that fact because that's around the size car I'm used to driving.  Overall, this car had the things we wanted without being overkill.  So, it won the buy a car battle!

Although, it is going to be interesting to make car payments now, Steve is smart with money and I'm more than willing to listen to him and work out a plan on how to save money (which we really have already done).  In the meantime, I'm going to enjoy my pretty new car, who I named Perry.  Yes, I named him after Perry the platypus, because Perry the platypus is really freaking cool!  Soon enough, my new mom car is gonna be full and that's OK.  When the kids reach elementary school and extracurricular activities, Steve and I will reevaluate the minivan situation.  Because I can tell you right now, I'm ready and willing to be the mom who helps haul the kid's friends around for fun times!  We'll see, though, in 5 years :).