New Car

Well, we did it. We finally got a new car. Our poor van had just about had it. It made more noises than my grandma getting up off the floor (sorry, Mimi, just kidding). Honestly, it's been a good van and I would suggest a Honda Odyssey to anyone with kids. George kept our cars running for ages, which I'm really glad for. However....with the amount of things blowing up around our house lately, I started to get pretty freaked out about driving the van, particularly with George going out of the country on Sunday.
Monday I looked at a Tahoe on my way back from Jacksonville. Four hours later, I drove it home. George and I had really liked a Tahoe we looked at last weekend. However, Dad gave us some good advice on making a decision about a new car, and a lot of help.
So George returned the Tahoe. And yesterday, the children and I drove to Wilmington to check out this awesome Honda Pilot. We decided to get a Pilot if possible because they seat eight and also get fairly good gas mileage. We spent pretty much all day in Wilmington and drove back that night. Tonight after work, George took the kids back to Wilmington to pick up the car and sign his portion of the paperwork. Drake calls it "the awesome car" and it actually is pretty awesome.
I'm super excited to drive it tomorrow, although there are a bunch of features I haven't figured out yet. I actually sat down and read part of the owner's manual tonight. It makes me cringe when I realized that the first owner of this car paid over $32,000 for it. We got it for a great deal, only a few years old and still in great shape. As hard as we are on our cars (and as messy as the children can be), there is no way that we'd buy a brand new car, even if we could afford one (and we can't).
Anyway, the Pilot is black and shiny and I LOVE it!! It has leather seats and is roomy - but not too big. It has a fold-down DVD player and remote-controlled headphones for the backseats. I love the leather smell (it reminds me of our absolute favorite car we've ever had, our champagne-colored Altima which, sadly, I totaled in a wreck seven years ago). George and I rarely buy cars, so when we do, I get really excited.
Of course, George acted tonight as though everything about it was wrong, even though he said explicitly that he did not want to come with me to look at it, that he trusted me to pick out what we wanted. He didn't like it being 4WD, even though he specifically said that he didn't mind getting a 4WD Pilot because they get good gas mileage. He also didn't like that it didn't have a trailer hitch. So what? We don't have anything to pull right now and if we (ever) get our boat finished, we can just buy a towing hitch. Third, he made a big deal about the DVD player not playing the DVD the children brought with them for the ride home, even though he burned that particular DVD himself and it never really played well on our DVD player at home, anyway. I took a store-bought DVD out and tried it later, and everything worked perfectly.
I just don't get it. I guarantee he'll come to love the car.
One thing I've decided out of all this though: I am not taking any children with me next time we have to shop for a new car (and hopefully that will not be for a good, long while).