Introducing Groucho!

Late, late Saturday night we brought home the newest member of the family, Groucho Simonds! 

Henry said the front of the car reminded him of a giant mustache, hence the name. 

We went to the lot around 7pm mostly to find out what they had, what our options were etc. We had been saving for a van almost since Johann started working and especially since we knew we were having a third kid. We had test driven some vans earlier and knew we wanted a Toyota Sienna just not what year or type etc. and we knew we needed one before June.  

When we met with the salesman we explained we were first time buyers, still less than two years out of school and that we were thinking of getting a certified preowned. He was nice but didn't seem too excited with us until after he ran the credit check and then out came the floor manager and finance guy etc. Well, long story short, after 4 plus hours (ie 11:30pm at night) we had everything signed at we left the lot with our 2014 Sienna SE. All the preowned ones they had were only maybe 3000 less and had a fair amount of miles so we decided to just go with a new one. We got 60 months with 0% interest so we're pretty happy about that. 

As we cleaned out our Malibu I was mostly thinking how cold and tired I was and then Johann says, "Just think, this is the car we took for our first date, when we were married, brought both our kids home in-it has a lot of memories." I'm not terribly sentimental but I lost it and cried like a baby in the middle of the car lot. I think a combination of tired, cold, hungry and a bit of sentimentality did it. I felt like I was betraying this car that had done so much for us but was on it's last leg and I was sending it off, probably to a chop shop.

I'm still a little sad we had to say goodbye to it, but I do feel much less worried about breaking down etc with the van, but I still don't feel like it is *our* car.  I'm sure the kids will do their best to mess it up and make it homey sooner than I want, though. The kids, especially Henry, were really excited on Sunday morning and Henry even made his primary teacher go out and see it after church. He loves to tell everyone, "everything is automatic!" 

Maybe it's stupid to have a whole post for a van but it's our first big purchase together as a married couple which I feel merits one. So goodbye to the malibu, we'll keep the great 7 years of memories and hello to a whole new set of memories to be made while using this van!