Well, We Did It...

After much debating, we did it...purchased a new vehicle.  I can't say that I'm not happy that we'll all have a nice, new vehicle to ride in coming into the summer travel season -- but I can say that I'm not at all happy to once again have a car payment to make.  We've been without car payments for several years now and to go back to having one...well...quite frankly, it makes me ill.

So just how did we arrive at this point?  Well, our oldest vehicle was just seven years old (this past weekend, in fact) but it was starting to show its age.  There were tiny rust spots popping up, many door "dings," two spots in which someone had actually hit our vehicle thereby causing dents in the area that they hit, stains in the carpeting, and we were starting to see mechanical issues -- our Key Fobs no longer locked or unlocked our doors, there was a strange knocking noise in the front of the vehicle near one of the tires, and we even learned (through the trade-in process) that part of the front-end of the vehicle was broken and starting to fall off.  So as much as we hate car payments, we decided it was time to take-the-plunge.

We've been driving vehicles for the past 1.5 weeks, talking to sales people, working on attempting to get the best price possible, and finally we are nearly to the end.  We sold our old van last night and tonight we purchased a new one.  Although we could have driven it home tonight, we decided to leave it at the dealership until Friday or Saturday so that they could install the few accessories that we decided to purchase, get the plates put on it, and give it a good detail before we drive it off the lot.

Curious what we ended up with?  A 2012 Honda Odyssey...

Here are some stock photos.  I'll add some "real" ones once we've taken possession of the vehicle I'm able to find the time to take some photos and post them online: