Our new truck!

We had been squishing our family into our little gold 2000 Camry for 5 months.  Pretty much every time we went to drive anywhere, it was a complete nightmare. Nixon kicked, the boys were so close they would have a slapping war, and Mycah screamed. Mike had to undo his seatbelt and lean back to reach the baby and try and comfort him. By the time we reached our destination, whether it was the grocery store five minutes down the street, or California 3 hours away, we were stressed the heck out. We didn't have the funds to run out and buy a newer bigger vehicle, so we dealt with it. Hey at least we had a working car! Right? Seriously though, I complained a lot, and I shouldn't have, but it was not an ideal situation for a family of five. Then something pretty awesome happened. We received an unexpected settlement from a car accident Michael was in a year and a half ago, where he was injured. He didn't expect anything because his medical bills had thankfully been paid and hadn't followed up with the claim. But they tracked him down, and sent him a check.  A blessing in disguise for sure. Anyways, we were able to shop for a car but were taking our time. Then a couple weeks ago, I had been driving on a hot day, and Mycah was crying really hard. I pulled over and he was so bright red and sweaty. The air conditioner wasn't hitting him because he is rear facing and there are no vents in the back. It scared me because he was so overheated and upset and wouldn't even nurse. You know something is wrong when he refuses Milkies! So we started looking. We knew we wanted three rows, for the very very slight chance we decide to have another baby later, and it would work out well for Mycah right now because Michael can sit next to him and comfort him when he's having a car seat meltdown. After not finding anything decent in Yuma, we took our search to CA. We went down there for the weekend with plans to find used SUVs to look at, and hopefully not go home with the Camry again. Haha! I emailed a few people, called a few people, and set up some appointments. One car car stuck out to me though, it was a couple, who were selling a 2002 Toyota Sequoia for almost $1500 under blue book. I emailed and asked if there was anything wrong with it, and the guy wrote me back and said that it ran great, and that they were just looking to downsize now that their daughter was old enough to drive. We drove 30 min to East San Diego to meet with Gene in their church parking lot.  Right away I could tell they were just really nice people. He was very up front about a couple little things such as the D not lighting up in the dash when it's in DRIVE, the antenna not going down anymoref rom his wife going through a car wash, and a small red scrape on the side where his daughter had scraped the side of a pole going through the chipotle drive thru. He told us that he had bought the car for his wife as a gift for Mother's Day, when she had quit her job to be a full time stay at home mom. It served them well, but they didn't need a large vehicle anymore. It felt right, sounded great, drove nicely, and it was a great deal.  We did the paperwork, handed him the money, and he even insisted we take $100 back for a screw he hadn't seen in the tire. He even gave me his number and two emails in case something wasn't working well. I'm so pleased with our purchase and feel so blessed to have finally gotten a vehicle large enough to comfortably fit our family and groceries. I also can't wait to use the seat warmers when we move to Utah and it snows! Haha!