Blood and cars.

I received a call from my OB's office today. The nurse was talking in a hushed voice and said, "I'm sorry but I have bad news..." I felt my heart start racing. She continued, "Unfortunately the tubes we used to collect your blood the other day were expired, so the lab needs to throw away the sample and get a new blood draw." Phew, easy enough problem to fix. Slightly annoying, but oh well.

On Monday I went in for the MaterniT21 test (the test that checks for chromosomal problems and as a bonus can tell the gender). It takes about 7-10 days to get the result, so I was excited to get the test done Monday hoping we'd have the results in before we head to Toronto next week to visit the in-laws. But now we probably won't get the results until after we are back since I had to go into the lab today to redo the test.

In other news we are in the market to buy a new car. Specifically, a minivan. I never thought I'd be a minivan kind of girl, but over the past few years I've warmed up to the idea. Even before we got pregnant with baby number three I was trying to sell Mr.P on the idea of getting a minivan so we'd have more space, be able to carpool, transport out of town guests, etc. Mr.P is more practical than I and he likes not having a car payment more than having more space. I kept arguing that although we own our cars, we really can't afford to own two BMW's that both have over 100k miles! When BMW's are running they are really nice cars to drive. When something breaks, they are cripplingly expensive to fix. In the past 8 months since paying off my BMW, we've sunk about $2k into various repairs. Now that we will have 3 kiddos in car seats, we need a bigger vehicle since my car only fits two car seats.

Sunday afternoon we had a babysitter and we headed out to the dealership to look at the van we were interested in (Honda Odyssey). We had test driven a used one a few months back, but this time we wanted to check out the specs on a new one and test drive it. We decided we want to buy a new one - for one thing, Honda's hold their value so while there is some discount to buy a used one, it's not that significant. Also, buying a new one we can get the 1% interest rate which is very compelling. Lastly, we plan on having the minivan for the next 12ish years until M2 is driving, so having a brand new one we will know all the service history on the car and hopefully not have any expensive repairs to deal with until well after it's been paid off. After test driving the 2014 model and seeing one of the new features for this model year - the blind spot camera - I was sold on this model.

The dealership evaluated our BMW for a trade in and they offered us a pathetically low trade in value. Of course we had researched the KBB value before hand and knew what they were offering us was a joke. The sales guy and the GM then tried to bully us by saying that they could see all sorts of issues with our car and that we were lucky they would offer us that much for a trade because those were going to be expensive repairs. We know our car and know it's in good running condition - they were just pulling a shady dealership move. Also, on the price of the car they would not budge much so we got up and walked away. I will not go back to that dealership. After reading reviews online later I realized that Honda dealership (the one closest to our house) has pretty poor reviews.

That night I did some research online and figured out all the pricing specs on this car - the invoice price, the MSRP, and read some forums on what kind of prices other people paid for this model. On Monday I talked to another Honda dealership and told them I had already been jerked around by another dealership and that I had a price in mind that I was willing to pay for a new Odyssey. I asked if they would sell us a car for that price and they said they would but only if we bought one they had in stock on their lot. They said they would also need to see my BMW to evaluate the trade in value. I stopped by and let them look at it. They offered more for a trade in than the other dealership, but not as much as we would have liked. Mr.P and I discussed it and decided we will sell the BMW ourselves first, then use the money as a down payment on the van. We took it to our mechanic on Tuesday and had him tune things up and fix a water leak issue (the sunroof drain was clogged and leaking water into the cargo compartment). I feel better privately selling the car knowing it is in great condition and running well.

We've had several contact about the car but most people want to see it this weekend, so we shall see. I'm hoping we can sell it this weekend and then get our new van! I have never owned a brand new car before, all of my cars I've owned have been used so this is extra exciting for me :-)