Introducing a New Member of the Family

Since I drug Lisa car shopping with me the past two Saturdays, she's asked me to write the blog about the newest member of our family. I feel obligated to oblige.

On Saturday, we became the proud new owners of a brand new 2009 GMC Acadia.

Our day started in Omaha when we made on offer on an all-wheel drive Acadia. It fell just beyond our price range so we moved on to Sid Dillon in Fremont, about 30 minutes away. There, we saw a larger number of vehicles on the lot and a few that were really close to what we were looking for.

After test driving a front-wheel drive with the heads-up display, we decided that it wasn't for us (plus it was a black vehicle with black interior...too much black for me).

We came back to the lot and found another FWD without the heads up display, but with titanium interior and a power liftgate. Perfect! So we negotiated a price and came up with what we feel was a good deal for us.

We began our ride home with just 25 miles on the vehicle, but after a 60 mile trek and errands around Lincoln, we're now around 125. It's really fun to drive and my favorite feature happens to be the Bluetooth capability so I can talk on the phone without holding it or wearing an earpiece.

So far, I've noticed that everyone drives entirly too close and I've come to the conclusion that walking all the way across a huge Wal-Mart parking lot is not too far as long as it means not getting door dinged.

We're very excited and look forward to many good times with our new family member.

- ML

Happy Valentine's Day!

Mike and I had a very nice day together. It started off with a trip to Omaha and Council Bluffs to look at vehicles. The Jeep is about to turn over 100,000 miles and as bad as the economy seems to be, we feel this might be an ideal time to strike a dynamite deal and inject our share of capital back into the market. After much deliberation (hours of research on the internet and crack...oops, I mean blackberry), Mike had determined the GMC Acadia was his vehicle of choice. We had an opportunity to test drive one today. Unfortunately, we weren't able to locate one that had all 4 of Mike's key requirements: (1) black exterior, (2) leather seats/heated, (3) all-wheel drive, (4) in the target price range. Finding our way back to Lincoln, we stopped in at a dreaded dealership (I will not name it, but am guessing those in Lincoln know the dealership I am referring to). The dealership is notorious for their pushy, overbearing sales staff. Our experience did not veer from what we feared and we found ourselves sitting across the table from a salesman who was one egg short of a dozen. He asked us several obnoxiously stupid questions, such as "If you were able to purchase a new Acadia with ALL of the bells & whistles...totally loaded with options, but for the price you are targeting, would you be motivated to purchase." How could one not respond with "Ummm, yeah, I guess." However, he was unfortunately, totally missing our message which cleared indicted we are only wanting "basic" options. He left us at his desk for more than ten minutes to which we determined he must have been in search of a key to grab a vehicle for a test drive (which we never requested), so we got up from our chairs, walked out a side door and got out of that lot as fast as we could. Not going back there anytime soon. After that unfortuate experience, it was time to start celebrating Valentine's Day in true form. We headed downtown to the only theatre in Lincoln showing the movie "New In Town". I particularly enjoyed the movie as the setting was in Minnesota (New Ulm). There were alot of "don't cha knows" in the dialogue! Mike got a kick out of it too! From there, we headed to Carlos O'Kelly's for a mexican feast. Our day of love is winding down with Mike at the helm in a game of Playstation. Hope you all had a great day too!