If we aren’t buying a car then I can I buy my coveted diaper bag?

Friday was a busy day for us. The Hubs had the day off so we decided to do two of our favorite things..eating and car looking :) About two months ago we discovered a local treasure of a breakfast place called Sil’s cafe. This place is legit. It is a typical greasy breakfast stop complete with first come first serve seat yourself rules (it was very confusing the first time we went there but now we have it down pat). Saturday’s are the worst though so since we had the opportunity to go during the week when the crowds weren’t as bad we jumped on it. Now this is not a diet place. The portions are huge huge huge. I unfortunately have fallen in love with their heated sweet roll (basically a cinnamon roll) but the size it crazy ridiculous. I think they just smoosh like 4 regular rolls together to form a “portion” and when I am finished it looks like I have barely touched it..but so yummy! The hubs always gets an amazing omelet so I of course have to steal some bites with him to counter-balance all the sugar going on, on my side of the table.

So that’s how we started our friday :)

From there, with full bellies, we rolled into the local GMC dealership to check out and possibly test drive the Acadia. Although we have two good working cars we had briefly considered trading in our Explorer for a more Gas economical car that could still give us room for all the baby stuff. We realized this would still be a ways in the future though. We had talked a lot about the Highlander (I am a total Toyota fan) but we also really like the GMC Acadia so we decided to check out both. Mostly just to see now what we really like so that in the future when we do decided to get a new car we will know mostly what we want. Although we couldn’t help tempting ourselves by bringing in the Explorer to see what they would give us for a trade-in…it never hurts to be informed..or maybe it does :)

We worked with an amazing and not pushy salesman at GMC and loved the ride and space of the Acadia. The GMC guy even let us drive the Acadia to the Toyota dealer to look at the Highlander while they were “checking out” our car. Let me say really quick, we really do like the Explorer but we were curious about what else is out there. And after getting in the roll-over accident in our old Explorer last fall both the Hubs and I get nervous taking our current one on long road trips even though it is totally reliable. After test driving both and seeing what each vehicle has to offer we both agreed we like the Acadia better. I refuse to get a minivan (not that there is anything wrong with them) and the Acadia gave us about the same space and an amazingly smooth ride.

Of course I have very odd tastes and I wanted the bottom of the line color (pure white) with the top of the features. Let’s just say my combo was almost impossible to find unless we had it built. However, the GMC dealership found 1 that had more features that we wanted but was pretty much our dream car. One problem though, it was way over our budget for what I had planned for when we decide to get a new car.  They weren’t willing to let us walk away though and we were curious as to what they could do for us (curiosity is not always good) so we let them fight it out and come up with an amazing offer. Basically they gave us huge discounts and knocked off almost $10,000 from the original quote. Believe me folks..this was really hard to walk away from. However, before we even left the house that day I was praying a lot for direction or self-control or whatever to keep us from making not wise decisions; and even though it was an amazing deal we decided to make a responsible decision and walk away. Who knew it would take us becoming parents to make us responsible :)

We could have totally handled it financially but both the Hubs and I decided that it would be better to wait longer and save more. We both didn’t want to get caught in the cycle of doing everything we can to get what we want right here and now, sometimes it’s better to wait. We decided this was one of those times. I was proud of us and though it was hard I am very thankful for a supportive hubs and guidance from my heavenly father.

It is amazing though that when you are looking at spending about $45,000 on a car other expenses don’t seem as bad. Case in point, I had really been wanting a certain diaper bag but really didn’t want to send $170.00 on one (which was what it cost). I had gotten an e-mail from Destination Maternity saying they were having a special to save 25% off one item which would bring the bag down to $130..but it was still hard to spend that much. However after our car excursion $130 didn’t seem like that much so I went ahead and splurged on it :) Maybe it’s still baby steps on being totally responsible and saving a lot of money but I am making progress! And now I get a cute new diaper bag that’s I can’t wait to get here :)

image from destinationmaternity.com

My MIL also got me an amazingly cute diaper bag (which I will have to post pictures of soon) so now I have options or can have them packed for different outings.