Cars

Pretty good crunch

See ya later Mustang!

Anyone who follows my Facebook posts knows that I had a bit of a car situation a few weeks ago. Early one morning (about 4:30 a.m.) on the way to the airport, I was going around a tight curve on I-35W and my rear wheels slid out from under me. (It was raining, and I had new tires, so I can only assume I hydroplaned.) I corrected, then corrected again, spun around and ended up slamming the driver's side of my rear bumper into the concrete barrier. A little shaken up, I turned around and kept going to the airport and went on my merry way, reporting it to insurance at the airport.

New Subaru, aka the pickle car

Geico decided to total the car, and gave me a check. Unfortunately, that left us with only a 1995 Ford Mustang. Let me tell you, it's difficult getting two kids with car seats into the back of a sports car. And when my rear wheels slid out from under me when pulling out of a parking lot when I wasn't even going very quickly, I decided I needed to replace that car as well. 

Barbi

I looked online every night for a couple weeks, and found out that there are a lot of cars with salvage titles due to hail damage. The salvage title and the physical damage make them quite a bit less expensive. We looked into a few of these cars, and over the course of 24 hours, we purchased two new-to-us cars: one is a 2005 Malibu Maxx (128k miles), and the other is a 2007 Subaru Impreza Outback Sport (55k miles). Because of the damage and the green color of the Subaru, Scarlett calls it the pickle car. And the Maxx has been dubbed "Barbie" (Malibu Barbie - yup, I live with all females).

Both cars are better in the snow, and I also managed to sell the Mustang. Thank goodness for two well-working cars!