Please welcome...

Please welcome to the stage the newest member of "The Peaden Life" cast:

At the very end of December David and I purchased this 2007 Hyundai Accent. It is a little darker than this picture shows - it's official color is Charcoal Grey but it definitely has some dark blue in it. I realize that this post is a little bit late - but better late than never right? I'll be honest, the reason that I haven't posted about this yet is because we still don't have a name for it! I feel like one of those people that brings their baby home from the hospital but can't decide on a name so they just call it "the baby" for the first two months of it's life. Except in their circumstance - they at least know the gender. Haha. I know that this probably sounds funny. But I like to have a name for the inanimate objects I use on a regular basis. (Remember our MacBook named Juliet and our iMac named Romeo?)  My first car was actually a truck - and we called him The White Knight (unless my dad was around and then we called him Princess to get a reaction from my dad.) The first car that I ever bought was a wonderful little 1993 Nissan Sentra named Toby (who was also charcoal grey). While David and I were dating, I named his car Tinka (a 2004 Hyunda Elantra). All of these names have come easily and have immediately stuck. However, we can't come up with a name that sticks for this car!

I decided that name or not - it was time to post about our car. We love it very much! David has been driving this car (ooh.. I hate calling it this car and not a name!) into work and I have been driving Tinka. It's nice to have two cars. For a long time we were only driving one car - because that was all that we needed - but now there is no way that we would be able to make it with just one car. We are so happy with our purchase!

First of all you should know - I love to barter with people. I like to know that I am getting the best deal possible. So here is the story:  We knew that we needed to buy a car before we started work on January 3rd - but with all of the things that were going on in December it just kept getting pushed to the backburner. Finally the week after Christmas we knew that we had to get on it or else we were going to be in big trouble! We started looking around on Monday and had a really broad range of cars that we were looking for. We were looking at cars that were $2,000 and cars that were $6,000. There were pros and cons with each side of the range but we ended up finding this awesome Hyundai Accent for a good price. We talked to the guy about it and after a while of bartering back and forth he told us that if we would buy it that day then he would give it to us for about $500 dollars less than the original price. We told him that we would think about it and get back to him. As we walked out the door he reminded us that the deal was only good for that day.

Now, David and I are not people who can be pressured easily. We were confident that if they would give us the car that day for that price, they would give it to us the next day. So Tuesday we woke up and went and looked at several other Hyundai Accents. We decided that the car we had seen on Monday was the one that we wanted so we went to our bank (Mountain America - we love them!) and got a cashiers check for $150 less than the price they had told us the day before. We were really nervous, but confident that they would accept our offer. We went back to the original car dealership and test drove our car one more time just to make sure - then we went inside and gave our sob story to the dealership guy. "We just graduated from college and are starting new jobs. We have saved for this car and don't want to take out any debt. We we planning on paying $500 less but we searched and scraped and came up with this final amount." We played it up good. When we told him our final price he said that there was no way - but then I pulled out the check and pushed it across his desk. Of course, he called his manager. After a few minutes, he hung up and said that the car was ours! We were SO excited. It feels great to know that you got a great deal.

So that is our story. The names that we have come up with so far are Darby, Nona, or Tacy. They are all a little bit different - and usually we don't like really strange names but these seem to be the only ones that we can come up with. We got the license plate back and the first three digits are "9th" - thats where Nona comes from. Nona means "ninth" in italian or something. What do you think? Do you have any suggestions for us? We need a name and we need it fast!