I will Take a Mommy Mobile in White Please

The Hubby and I had the luxury (strike that and insert NEED) to shop for a new vehicle for this Rookie Mom. When Cookie first arrived we thought the Camry would still be the most practical car, that is until we put the stroller in and had zip zilch zero room left to haul the other necessities such as groceries, impulse shopping trips to the mall and of course the one million extra things you need when getting away for the weekend with a newborn. Other than that it was a fabulous car, and I just loved it!

Thanks to the use of www.Craigslist.org I sold our car in less than a month and got top dollar for it. Now for a nice little marketing plug...If you have never used Craigslist, I would highly recommend it. You can sell just about anything on the site. It is FREE of charge and covers the entire US. Much to the Hubby's suprised he thought it would be on there for a while, thus decreasing his fear of having to spend All Day at a Car dealership with a wife who loves to haggle and of course our little peanut.

So it goes, last Friday we said goodbye to our little Camry and spent the rest of the evening discussing which cars to look at. Since we had gone and looked at one particular kind of vehicle a couple of Saturday's ago, we decided that we would not go back to that particular place. Due to the fact that the Manager sat with us and kept reiterating that we looked like intelligent people and then the typical line followed, Don't worry folks we will do everything to get you into a vehicle today. I thought WOW, what a great Salesperson....NOT. Without being able to contain myself, I just had to ask the Hubby so "what do intelligent people look like?" He simply replied, "No comment." I thought it would be best to end the 20 question game at that point.

The following day we went to another said dealership and much to our surprise it was open on a Sunday. Now in my opinion Sundays are for resting., not haggling for cars We were curious about this one particular car so we decided to brave the shark infested waters aka car dealership yet again. This time the salesperson said to us, "why this particular timeframe, you know I can give you much better deal today than I can in three months." This time no containment, I just busted out like a smartbutt (That is what we say in TX when we choose to be a lady not to use that nice little three little AS* word, though I can slip on it from time to time) and said, "Get out of here you have got to be kidding me!" The Hubby simply said with a laugh, "Thank you for your time, and we will be leaving now!"

This leads us up to this past Saturday when we loaded up Baby Cookie, grabbed a Starbucks (shocker, Kari having a Starbucks) and headed out to brave the waters for what would be the last couple of places we visited. Now with all this rambling I am sure that you are quit curious to what it is we are shopping for....

[wait for it, wait for it, are you on pins and needles in anticipation]

A Mini Vaaannnnnn

Yep, that's right the Cook's will be sporting a nice Toyota Minivan within the week. Yes, the Hubby looks quit sexy driving it and it was the most practical thing we could agree on due to my garage hitting record. For those who aren't aware, our garage door has a tendency to jump out in front of me and the walls of the garage have squeezed my car before. Who would have ever thunk-it, garages can jump and squeeze...well my can and that is the story I will be sticking to, Thank You very much. So the thought of any kind of LARGE SUV was just out of the question.

That lead us to option number two...the pimped out Mini Van. Yes, it will even have a spoiler and sunroof for those mini van enthusiasts that like to live on the edge.

Now I know a few of you are probably thinking about the vow I made as a teenager (when of course I knew everything), "I Kari, vow to NEVER drive a mini van when I have kids." I guess when I sign the papers on Thursday I will just have to eat a shoe for that I NEVER, but that is okay on Friday I will be sportin' the minivan to Day care!

In conclusion, we did meet some interesting characters on this journey and I picked up a few new tricks. The first one being, always ask what the invoice price is and use that as your negotiating tool and ask for it in writing. The second tip is, always bring a baby along that way you can use the line...okay can we speed this up, my little one has a full diddy and it is time for another feeding.

Now for the Disclaimer: These are the Cook's car shopping adventures. The opinions set forth are of ours and we do not think that all car salesman/saleswoman are idiots, just a few say the darnest things.

Stay turn...pics to follow!