AND THE WINNING OPTION IS...............????

Here are the four of us Monday morning, July 9th all set to leave Tulsa and head for Kansas City, MO and a fun few days at Worlds of Fun & Oceans of Fun amusement & water parks. The sun was in Aric's eyes and he was not cooperating :o) Mickey is holding our map instructions so we don't get lost. (click on pictures to enlarge)

We are by our beautiful 1993 Cadillac Eldorado with only 81,102 miles on it. Little did we know when this picture was taken that 2 days and 300 miles later this car would have to be towed from the Oceans of Fun parking lot to a Cadillac dealership. The unfortunate diagnose the transmission is out. I posted here about our 5 options. Car troubles are never pleasant....but they are certainly compounded when you are on vacation, in a city 300 miles from home, with an 8 year old grandson and 12 year old granddaughter you are hoping to show a good time.

Well, I think I've held you all in suspense long enough as to which option we chose. And the winner is Option 3 - Buy a new car!

This picture was taken at 12:30 p.m. July 12, 2007 as we were preparing to drive off with this.

She is a 2007 Chevy HHR. The color is "Sunburst Orange Metallic" and the enterior is called "Cashmere" (a very light tan). To me she is Cooper colored. We got to the dealership about 6:30 Wednesday after Mickey had rented a car, picked me and the grands up, (sunburned, sore, very tired and full of junk food only since breakfast) and a good dinner.

The minute we walked on the lot to begin looking, and after meeting the sales person Mickey had talked to earlier, I spotted this car. We had bought a new Lincoln in 1976 that was almost this exact same color and I had loved that car. We looked at most of the Chevy line, drove this one and a dark blue Malibu and liked this one the best.

The dealership closed at 8 and we left about 8:35. We were not going to make a decision until we had prayed about it, slept over it, and of course I was even able to enlist prayer warriors via my blog and the handy-dandy computer in the motel lobby at 4 a.m.!!!! My portion of the sleeping over it was very short!!!!! 4 hours to be exact.

I knew this had taken us very much by surprise but I knew it was not a surprise to our Father God!! While I was typing my blog and asking for prayer the Lord just dropped in my Spirit this thought "I wouldn't have you here in Kansas City with a broken down vehicle at a Cadillac-Chevy dealership if you weren't suppose to buy a Cadillac or Chevy". Mickey and I both felt, almost from the beginning that the '93 was not worth pouring a huge amount of money into and it would be best to bite the bullet and buy a new vehicle. Our biggest concern was we hadn't looked at cars in years and here we were limited to the GM product only. Wasn't the "practical" thing to do would be to look at various makes and models, compare all the features, prices, etc. and then deside? See how easily we fall into the mind and our "thinking" and conditioning take over!!!!! No this was our answer. The Cadillac was economically out of the question for us on a fixed income. Now it was just a matter of which Chevy did we like, want and felt would fit our needs.

It just so happened (don't believe that for a moment either!!) that two of the couples we run around with had just recently bought HHR's!!! One a black one and the other got a gold metallic. They were both delighted with their purchases, comfort wise, mileage wise, ride, etc. Believe me Jack & Mary, and Don & Carol, that gave us great comfort!!!

We walked back into the dealership at 8:30 Thursday morning. Had them call our sales person on the phone and she was there in about 15 minutes. By 12:30 we were driving off the lot and heading home with our new jewel.

We cannot say enough for the dealership and how effeciently, professionally and kindly they handled our transaction. You know it's not easy to trade-in a car when you don't even have the title on you, you live in another city, etc. None of these factors were any problem with them. They even called our Insurance company and had the coverage transferred to our new vehicle for us.

We, our grandkids and our new vehicle are now safe and sound back home in Tulsa where we found we had an additional 4" of rain which completely finished off Mickey's lovely garden. Oh well, next years another year.........but we don't plan to be buying another vehicle next year. Ooops...better never say never, Mickey's pick-up has a lot of miles on it, and so do WE!!!