The Amsbury Family 2009 Vacation: the new car

Dad was able to get a mechanic friend of his from church to come over on Sunday to check out old suburban. The verdict was that the car was totaled. It needed a completely new engine.
Well, I told David that there was absolutely no way on this green earth that I was going to put one more red cent into fixing the darn thing. And, luckily he agreed with me this time. So, no fighting began.
David was completely upset though. He just kept saying he wanted to go home..... Just rent a van and go home... I just couldn't see spending a few hundred dollars on a car rental and driving home to Toledo to look for a car, though. Our vacation would have been totally over that way.
I felt at peace with what happened anyway. I knew we were being watched over. We are ALL the time. We see little miracles happen for us here, there, and everywhere... I mean, for heaven's sake, of all places we could have broken down on the road to Florida and it happened to be 5 minutes from my dad's house. Way to coincidental! Plus, it was nice to have some extra family time to strengthen bonds.
And, I wanted to stay on our vacation or salvage what we could of it anyway. My dad felt the same thing. So we ganged up on David to get him to agree to go look for a new car on Monday. He didn't like it and it got a bit tense at times. I understand though. It is difficult for some people to accept change and spend several thousand dollars on a whim. David is one of those people. I, however, love buying new things and have no problem spending thousands of dollars. But, I did tell him that if we didn't find anything for our family that we felt good about then we could just go home in a rental.
It was Monday morning and we were off to buy a new car, or at least try. We ate some breakfast, kissed the kids and headed out the door into the freezing wind.
David and I said a prayer in the car for the Lord's guidance to be with us on our task. Then we drove to a GM dealership. We have 4 kids and one on the way, so we needed a car that fit everyone and had luggage room. That eliminated everything but passenger vans and suburbans.
The challenge was that there were very few car dealers in town and even fewer vehicles the size we needed.
The GM dealer did have 1 suburban on the lot. We sat in it, tested it out and fell in love with it. It was a 2010 model with 2 DVD screens, heated seats, and a video screen that turns on when backing up. And, that is all to start... There were so many awesome things in that car. The problem was that it was $61,000+. The car salesman tried to find us a cheaper car, but it was 150 miles away. And, even that one was too expensive. They didn't seem to care that I said, “I know you can make this work, so come back with better numbers and we'll buy the car today." They came back with worse numbers so we walked out.
We had one other dealer to see in the town and then we were going to rent our car to head back to Toledo. I'm telling ya... it is a tiny podunk town.
So, we walked on the lot and were greeted by an good ol' boy with a heavy accent. We told him we needed a suburban and we needed to buy it today. He said, "Well... all I have that size is a Cadillac Escalade." Then he walked out to it and we followed him. David hit me on the shoulder and had a huge grin on his face when the guy, whose name is Smitty, wasn't looking. I just smiled back and thought, "How weird that God wants us to have a new Cadillac Escalade!"
It turned out it was the right price, so David and I took it for a test drive. While driving he began hounding me with questions. That drove me nuts. He wanted me to tell him what to do, but I didn't know what he wanted me to say because he kept going back and forth about this being a good car and not being good. I may have had a mini meltdown.... But, I will not confirm that.
When we got back, we told Smitty to work out the numbers and that we would buy the car if the numbers were agreeable. When we were giving him our deets, he learned that David was a medical resident and that we were on our vacation. He felt badly for us, so he took off a few grand from the price. We appreciated that.
So, then Smitty disappeared into the vortex wherever car sales guys go to check credit and work out financing. It was a very LONG time. It was so long that I had to go to the bathroom about 10 times (Gotta love pregnancy...) before he came back and told us we just about got the financing just fine. But, we might have to stay in town longer than we wanted to. We told him we didn't want to do that and that we might as well go home to look for a car in a town with many more options available to us.
Upon hearing that, he sent us to the finance guy's office. The finance guy said we got approved sort of.... He was pretty sure that the bank he sent the loan app. to would accept the loan, especially since David would be a full-fledged doctor in a year or so. But, the girl who approves the loans was out of the office. Fortunately, the town is really small and he and girl went to high school together. They stayed in touch and he called her at home. But, unfortunately she wasn't home and was not answering her cell phone.
The finance guy asked us to stay until the next day's morning. We said that wasn't going to work for us. There would be no point in staying because our vacation would be too short to salvage for us. We said we would just go rent a car and go home if we couldn't have the car right then. Oh yeah... and we demanded 0% down so we could still have money for our vacation.
The guy felt bad and said he didn’t want to tell anyone they couldn't go on vacation, so he quickly talked to the general manager.
He came back and said, "Take the car."
I said, "Well, we don't want to put you guys out. What if we don't get approved tomorrow morning when your friend gets into work?"
He said, "Don't worry about that. That would be on us, then. And you would get a free car rental for your vacation. If the financing doesn't go through just return the Escalade after your trip. Enjoy it."
David and I just looked at each other and said, "Umm.... O.K."
And that is that. We walked away with a Cadillac Escalade under blue book value that worked awesome and have so many cool features it made our heads spin.
We left for Florida Monday night about 5pm. We drove straight through, so we could have 4 full days left for our vacation. The ride was sweet. Heated seats warmed the front and back seats. We listened to XM radio the whole way. And the snow we drove through was no big deal because we had all wheel drive. And, it has a built in touch screen navagation system. I LOVE MY NEW CAR! I had fun reading the owner’s manual about all the other features too! I just might have an Escalade from here on out....

Driving out of my dad's little town.

David unloading the Escalade at the condo we stayed at.

Yeah... We're flashy money bags now.... Hahaha... yeah right. We dread going to church Sunday. We expect a lot of looks. OY! If Only everyone knew it was only car we could afford.

That even sounds crazy to say and hear!

OH! By the way... Our old suburban is now at the local junk yard in my Dad's town.

They gave us a $500 check for it.