McKenzie's 16th Birthday present

So Mike finally broke down and bought a new car!

His 1999 Chrysler Concorde has served us well. We bought it in June 2003 when we moved to Austin. We had survived with only one car for 8 years but without the public transportation options we had in Seattle, we had to go to two cars. We bought the Concorde with 60,000 miles and as of Saturday the car had over 160,000 miles. I wish I could say that Mike was going to miss his car, but I don't think so! He has a 35 mile commute to work so he spends a lot of time in his car.

The new car, a 2010 Toyota Camry, is kind of similar to his old car. Dark red, four doors, tan leather interior, and moonroof. Wait! It is exactly like his old car! Honestly it doesn't look that different than the old car except for it's about 5 feet shorter, it hasn't faded to pink on the top and the passenger door actually opens. Oh, and the new one has a lot less miles on it!

Rebecca has been Mike's car buying assistant for the past month or so. On their first car buying expedition, Becca interviewed Mike about what he wanted in a car and wrote of list of what he wanted so that she could show it to the salesmen. She would also take pictures of the cars that they would look at and write down notes as they did some test drives. What a great helper. Kenzie went along once but apparently didn't understand the car buying rules. She felt it necessary to tell the salespeople what bad shape Mike's old car was in and how bad he needed a new one. Mike felt it necessary to tell Kenzie to shut up!!

I must admit I didn't go on these trips. The car really is Mike's. I can count on one hand the number of times I have driven his car in the last year. The car he ended up buying he brought to the house and I got a chance to drive it around the neighborhood and give final approval before Mike made the final decision. I still think it's funny how much this car is like his old one!