Car issues are no fun. They stress me out. They cost tons. And they leave us with very few options. I’m sure that if we lived in a more metropolitan city there’d be more options. But, in Phoenix, you just have to have a car. There’s no other option. And with four kids, you have to have a *big* car. We bought the Suburban almost exactly three years ago. Right before we adopted D & d we knew we’d need a bigger car. It was right around this time three years ago that we got the call about our V. We had pretty much given up on any chance of our boys having a relationship with each other when we got the call from his lawyer asking us if we knew he was in care and asking if she should pass our information onto the caseworker.
We immediately started making calls trying to change our license–we were only licensed for up to three foster kids and D & d’s adoption was still a few weeks away. We started looking at bigger cars–all of a sudden we’d need room for four carseats. That meant it was either a huge SUV or a minivan. And the huge SUV won out.
But, now here we are again. The Suburban is having issues. There’s the window that won’t move. The gas gauge isn’t working. The wipers have issues. It needs a new catalytic converter and it needs a new tire. All of these things cost money. And a lot of it. More money than we want to put into an already 8 year old car.
So, we went back to looking at minivans.
But…
I did *not* buy one!
As of today, I am the proud owner of a Taurus X. I’d never heard of it, but it was what worked best for us. We bought a 2009 with only 10K miles on it. It’s about the size of a minivan… smaller and more narrow and shorter than my big old Suburban, but it will also get about double the gas mileage. I think it’s a good change. I’ll post photos in the next week or so…
Your catalytic converter needed a new tire? Cool!