With a very heavy heart I said goodbye to a dear and loyal family member today. We parted with our dear old Ford Explorer. She was a good girl. I kind of felt like I'd gotten rid of a loyal dog that didn't deserve to be given away, but change of circumstances meant we had to.
The dear old Explorer has been our car for the last 5 years & she's been a good car & she was a keeper, but we had the dilemma of bubba #6 coming soon. An 8 person family and a 7 seater car don't really go together :-( We had looked at lots of options, trying to keep the Explorer and nothing was really coming together. What ever option we looked at involved an after market seat in the back of a car with no room for 3 booster seats. We have tiny kids and whilst Holly is 9 this year she still needs a booster of some kind. So we still had no idea about our future family transport & D day was looming. With the move approaching we didn't want to constantly make two car trips to Brissy and back.
Then on Friday we were sitting in traffic having the common "in the car discussion" of late, when we stopped at lights behind a Land Cruiser. I said to Mark "Hey I think you can get an 8 seater Crusier". That got us thinking and we decided that our option may be to trade the Explorer, we'd still have our 4WD that we didn't want to part with, but we might just have the 8 seater we longed for.
So after some looking around and some praying we decided to make some serious enquiries. The conditions we had were, we didn't want to have to outlay and money to swap over & we didn't want it to cost us any more than what we currently paid on the Explorer. So we found a car, it met our criteria and today we did the deal!
Don't get me wrong I am flat out excited to have a newer car & one that will fit the whole family & secretly I think I've fallen in love with her, but I cried as we drove up the highway to do the trade. I liked the Explorer she was a good girl & I just hope she finds a nice home. Mark reminded me that "it's just a machine" and I get that, but it's got me thinking about all the things happening right now. How hard will it be to say goodbye to our home of the last 4 1/2 years when I cried like a baby when I faced saying goodbye to our car. Mark put it well when he said "But we're leaving something that's not ours, for something that is" but it's walking away from 1 life to another. Driving into the new driveway in a car that's "different" just makes it really feel like we are stepping into a BIG new chapter of our lives. I guess it's like the cars, I'm HUGELY excited about what's to come, but it's hard to say goodbye to the familiar.
So Explorer, thanks for being a good car, for being ever reliable, and for being part of our family.
And to you Miss Cruiser, you have some big shoes to fill honey.
I'll leave you with today's journey in pictures.
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The Explorer's last "hurrah"
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Ohhhhh Marky look at you looking all cute in.......... what's that.... your new car!!!
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6 comments:
OH Sal, love that you are posting more regularly this year and we get to keep up with life at the Cliffords. Love the look of your new car and I am sure it won't be long before you fall in love with her also.
Finally I have a blog award for you on my blog :)
Yay for the new car Sal!! It looks fabulous - very flash! ENJOY!
What a lovely new Cruiser! Plenty of room in there for the 8 of you now! Enjoy.
he he ... look at those kids doing the 'oh what a feeling' jump. Enjoy!!!!
nice car..:)
leaving will be hard, believe me
but u r walking towards something fantastic, it will be everything u dreamed im sure of it..:) big hugs
you gotta love a toyota Sal, I have a toyota Prado and I love it.
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