Goodbye minivan, Goodbye Audi!

We finally decided to trade in both our VW minivan and our flashy little red Audi plug-in hybrid.  We figured that both these vehicles would not be sufficient if and when we move to IL. As much as we liked both cars, I don't think it would survive the snow and rain puddles!

But first, it is Bobby's birthday!!!

The boys drew up a card for Bobby. I thought Charlie did such an awesome job drawing Mickey Mouse and there was some story about going to a "broccoli farm" so there was also drawings of that too. LOL!

I bought Bobby some sort of fancy golf gadget:  

You put these little knobby things at the end of your golf club and you're able to track how far and how well you hit your shot.  Fancy!  We haven't tried it out yet but hopefully soon.

We quickly put together some banana corn muffins, shaped it to the letter B, and managed to find a candle for the birthday boy :-)

We head out to the car dealership in Anaheim.  So much negotiation and paperwork... it took over 3 hours!!!  It's a good thing we brought our bag of chips:

Looks like there is already a sticker on our minivan.  We love you, minivan! At first, the dealership only offered $1,500 for it and we were able to get them to offer $3k for it.  Phew! The van still runs well as a 10 year old (as old as Charlie!) but we have been having issues with our sliding doors and those probably would have cost a lot to fix:

We originally went to the dealership to look for a Toyota Sequoia.  That was the type of car we had rented during our Spring Break trip in Chicago.  It was massive with a 3rd row!  The dealership struggled to find the vehicle in its lost and when they did eventually find it, the car couldn't even start.  And it was also stuck behind another car, which they couldn't find the keys to.  So we decided to wander about the lot to see if there was any other vehicle we liked.  And then, drum roll.... 

TA DA!!!

Coincidentally, it's another red vehicle!  It's a 2020 Toyota 4Runner TRD Off-Road.  Just under 32,000 miles on the odometer. Sweeeeet! :-D

I think we got a decent trade-in for it with the Audi too. We managed to trade in the Audi for $2,000 more than what we purchased it about 1.5 years ago.  How crazy is that!?  Car value going up with the added mileage?? That's almost unheard of!  Plus, the dealership also let us borrow the Audi for another 2 weeks until the boys are out of school.  We are definitely going to miss it!

But looks like everyone is happy in this truck.  Extra space for everyone!!

There she is... or is it a he?  I think we were going to name it Bruno, or was it Bruce.  Obviously still working on a name :-P

So far, we've been very happy with the trunk space.  Perfect for beach outings:

I'm so glad we now have a nice chunky, high-profile truck that can weather all seasons.  Plus, it can also go up and down curbs too, if necessary. LOL!!

And oh, by the way, we were trying to hide the fact that we were going to Disneyland for Graham and Bobby's birthday.  So Bobby somehow came up with "Broccoli farm".  The kids eventually did find out the surprise though as I had accidentally mentioned about being in Anaheim.  Oops, these boys are getting too smart these days!