Thursday, March 5, 2009

The Car Search Continues

Along with going to bible study on Thursdays, we also pick up our grandson Andy from school. He is in kindergarten and gets out at 12:20 pm. So as soon as I get home, I have time enough to go potty and then it's a mad dash across Madison Avenue (east) to Orangevale. Today Melody, Andy's older sister, had a minimum day so we picked her up too.

We've been taking Andy to McDonald's for lunch and have tried to get him to agree to go get pizza instead. Well, Melody wanted to get pizza. When we mentioned it to Andy, he tried to get his sister to say McDonald's instead. He was suppose to be whispering but I heard him. So I told him let's do something different today and we could always go to McDonald's another day. (That is not our "favorite" place to go). He agreed so we went to Round Table. We got personal size pizzas for them, Andy wanted cheese and Melody wanted pepperoni. Gerry and I got the buffet. They ended up taking the rest of their pizzas to Auntie Elizabeth's.

Their mom is Jenni, the older of Gerry's twin girls. Gerry's oldest daughter Elizabeth babysits them until their mom gets off of work. The reason we pick Andy up on Thursdays is because one of Elizabeth's girls has a class at their charter school on Thursday mornings.

After we dropped them off we drove over to Roseville to look at a Hyundai Entourage van. We didn't take it for a ride but did like it. From there we drove over to the auto mall to the Toyota dealership. We looked at some used Sienna vans and Highlanders which is a crossover. We then decided to look at new Siennas. They had a 2008 which was the last 2008 Sienna on the lot and it was marked down quite a bit. We ended up taking it for a drive. We liked it, however, it had a feature that I did not like. When the car is put into park from drive, all the doors unlock. From a safety standpoint, that was a big red flag for me. When I am by myself, I do not want all the doors unlocked at the same time. I would be so vulnerable for perhaps someone getting in the vehicle and harming me. The salesman told me he thought that was a programable issue and it could be fixed. Well, what he told us it was either like that or programed so that you would have to manually unlock the door to exit the vehicle. He of course wanted us to buy the car. We told him several times, we were looking, had other vehicles we wanted to look at before we made a decision. Well, then he got another salesman and the sales manager to talk to us. By then, I was completely turned off. I do not like "high pressure" sales and will walk out when that occurs. One of the guys actually followed us to our car.

We then went over to the Nissan dealership. We looked at a used Honda Odyssey and a used Nissan Quest. They can also show cars on the Ford dealership lot next to them so we went over there to see what they had. We liked the Honda but it had too many miles on it for a 2008, over 60 thousand. We then looked at a brand new, loaded Nissan Quest. I liked every thing about it, Gerry had some issues with the third seat and how it went down. We didn't drive it, by then it was after 5, the sun had gone down, the clouds were rolling in and it was getting cold. We didn't have jackets with us because it was beautiful when we left home earlier to go get the kids.

The salesman who was showing us around was so pleasant, not at all pushy. His supervisor came out to meet us and came over when we were getting ready to leave and also was very pleasant. It certainly was a different experience than what we had at the Toyota dealership. So we still need to drive the Hyundai and the Nissan. Gerry did call Jason while we were at the Nissan dealership and he seemed to be okay with what we had looked at so far. I know Gerry likes the price of the Toyota over the Nissan so I have no idea what he will decide on. I'm hoping for the Nissan. :) Will have to see.

To be continued....

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