We have come so far

I am at that stage in my life that I look back and see how far we have come in life.
When we got married in 1990, we rented a little apt for $325 a month. One bedroom, one bath, not nearly enough room for 2 people. But it worked out for a while and we saved enough to move into a two bedroom. It was much nicer.
We also came into our marriage with 2 cars and 2 car payments. Our payments combined were somewhere a little over $500 a month. That hurt too, considering we had other bills too. We struggled for a long time.
We had some serious financial trouble after Eric was born. We accumulated some major hospital bills with him, and he was sick all the time. So that required me to be out of work a lot. That hurt. And money just wasn't there .
We had this one car, 93 thunderbird, I loved that car. And while driving home one day, I had a head gasket blow out on me. So that reduced us to one car, the Toyota Tercel (blogged about it earlier, Johanna got a chuckle out of it). That was the only car we had for a long time. It wasn't too bad, we worked different schedules and it worked out pretty good. We got the red tercel for $900 tax and all. It worked, that was all that mattered to us.
My poor little tercel finally got traded for something else and someone eventually wrecked it. We have had several cars over the years, and I finally ended up a car that I am really happy with. A 2004 VW Jetta. I love my little car, I had to put work into before we left for vacation, but I am really happy with it. It has everything in it that I prefer to have.
Chuck went out a few years ago, with him driving very far everyday I wanted him to be safe. I wanted him to have a car that he would be happy with. I told him to go out and buy whatever you want. He came home with a Honda Accord fully loaded, V6. Great car, of course it is, it is a HONDA. We took that on vacation and it was basically Chuck's car. I love my Jetta.
Well, the lease was coming up on the Honda in about 6 months. At that point Chuck would have to make a decision on whether to refinance the Honda for another 3 years, or to trade.
We looked at minivans last weekend. I really liked the Toyota Sienna, but the price of it was outrageous! It was too much money for a van. Now, it had everything you could ask for... dvd, video outlets, wireless headset, you name it, it had it. And the room was wonderful. But we only needed the room for vacations and a few times a year. Other than that, we really didn't need a minivan.
Chuck spotted something on the Toyota lot a few weeks ago. Loved it right away. And it was in our price range.

Perfect? Well, it was small, 2 door, hatch back. Well, we can rent something to go on vacation in, or take 2 cars, right? Right!
This is what he comes home in on Saturday afternoon

after working a deal like no other deal.
In the long run, it will cost about $2000 more than what the Honda would have cost us. I think I would much rather have this for $2000 more than a Honda. It is red, it is sleek and it is fast, 6 sp manual transmission.
I like it!
Now I do like the new kitchenaid stuff that my Lisa is getting, and I will be requesting a new mixer for Christmas. But I am responsible enough to really enjoy this car, old enough to know exactly how to drive it. Young enough to still be able to get in and out of it.
I was sitting in it the other night and I was crying. To see how far we have come in life. I couldn't believe it, I couldn't believe that a Mercedes is now sitting in my driveway.
Ok, I just had to brag a little bit!