Selling and Buying our Cars!

Well we had quite the week when it comes to cars!  Aaron and I both said good-bye to our cars that we love and had as our own before we got married.  It was bittersweet.  We were relieved to finally get them sold so we can get a family car, but it was hard to say good-bye!

We've had three cars for awhile now (long story).  We have Aaron's Solara, my Nissan, and my Prius.  Aaron bought his Solara when he got his first job after college, I bought my Nissan while we were engaged, and we bought the Prius together within the last year to replace my dying Nissan.  The plan has been to eventually sell my Nissan, and then once the baby comes Aaron was going to commute with his Solara while I used the Prius that we bought for me.  Aaron and I were commuting together so we drove my Prius together pretty much every day (hello, at 49mpg how could we drive anything else?!).  But since I've been having to stay home and not drive, Aaron hasn't wanted to transition back to his car because he LOVES my Prius.  So he's been driving that every day.  It's all high-tech so he can talk to it and tell it to set the temperature or navigate to the house or whatever else.  Recently he decided he wants to keep it long term, so he suggested we sell his car so he could keep the Prius instead, and we could get a small SUV for me so that I have more room for groceries and a stroller and all of that "stay-at-home mom" stuff.  I love my Prius too, but I'm pretty sure Aaron has fallen more in love with it than me and it makes sense for him to have the better gas mileage for commuting, so I agreed.  And let's face it - when Aaron is happy, I'm happy.  So if my Prius makes him happy, he can have it :)

Thus began all the car selling and buying!

So Aaron sold his "bachelor car" Toyota Solara.  Aaron was sad to see it go because he's had a great experience with that car, but he's barely driven it in the last few months and he wants to be able to put our baby in his car too (not happening with a 2-door coupe!) so he was ready to say good-bye.  We sold it to a really great couple that live nearby and it was a great selling experience where everyone walked away feeling good :)  I am bummed that we didn't get a photo of Aaron in front of the car though!  I planned to get one but I was out of the house when he sold it.  When I got back and mentioned it to him he was disappointed he hadn't thought of that.  But the couple lives close by so maybe we can sneak over and get a picture sometime!  ;)  Just kidding.

I sold my Nissan Sentra (my "Angie" car).   I love that car!  It was falling apart though so it just wasn't safe anymore.  I sold it to a mechanic so he can fix it up and use it as a commuter car.  It worked out well in the end.  But I was surprised how hard it was to hand over the keys!  :(

So we actually sold both of our cars on the same day (same hour too - how funny is that!?) and that was Wednesday.  (and a huge THANK YOU to Jeanette for giving me multiple rides to sell my car!)

Then today we drove up to this awesome little dealership a few minutes north and took a second look at a Toyota Rav4 that we had liked a couple weeks ago.  It's in really great shape and very well-maintained.  They had dropped the price as a Thanksgiving sale so it was a really good deal and we both felt good about it - 

so now we own a Toyota Rav4!!!  

We love it!  We're really excited about our first "family car" and even more excited about paying cash for a car for the first time!  That felt very good.  So we're really excited!  It's fun to have two cars that we both jointly own, instead of our individual cars we had the first few years we were married.  And we can put a car seat in either one!  We had a really great experience at the dealership so if you are local and looking for a great deal from some honest guys, we highly recommend Happy Trail Motors off of I-25 and Hwy 66.  So now we own a Toyota Prius and a Toyota Rav4 - can you tell we're Toyota fans?  :)

Here are a few photos from the dealership of our Rav4...

It's crazy to me to think this is the car where I'll have a car seat in the backseat and a stroller in the back, .... so weird!  Sometimes I still can't believe this is all happening!  This will be an adventure for sure  :)