yay, yay, yay, after so much searching and mulling and trying to decide!

 We finally bought a truck!  It was a hard decision, you can get an SUV, newer, with fewer miles for less, but it's not a truck.   A truck is almost essential, to take things to the dump, to buy things you really NEED from Marketplace, and for Paul to put the dead deer in during hunting season.  You need it to load up your ice fishing gear, and to transport the kayaks over to the river to fish.  You need it to tow the boat, if you're able to borrow it...(ha, last year at this time I was looking for a small camper on Marketplace, now the prices have gone through the roof, they sell immediately, and how the tables have turned, we didn't even have anything to tow it with until...now!)

We bought a truck.  It's not new, but it's got low mileage, 30 thousand, ten years old, and it was under twenty thousand dollars.  It has new tires, a new exhaust system, and it looks decent.  It's the same year and color as the one that just got smashed up, but it has four doors, so it's nicer.  The difference between what the insurance paid us (plus we had to pay off the loan!), and what it cost to replace it, ugh.

But, it is a seller's market for vehicles right now.  New car production has been slowed down by lack of a particular chip that is essential, so the dealerships aren't getting new cars to sell, therefore they aren't getting the used ones in trade.  People are getting stimulus checks, and buying vehicles because they certainly aren't traveling, unless they're going to Florida.  There's more domestic travel going on for vacations, and people are buying cars.  

Trucks are always more pricey, now even more so.  

So we are happy with our decision, we pick it up tomorrow.  

We are programmed to get newer and better, to upgrade, to always aspire to the next level.  We have personally experienced this, as we started out in an apartment, then bought an older mobile home in a dumpy park, then traded it in for a brand new mobile home (oh were we ever in absolute HOG HEAVEN!), in a nicer small park...then we were able to build a brand new house, on a nice country road....we had a small pop up camper, traded that in for a huge 35 foot bunkhouse camper, hitched to the back of our 15 passenger van, oh we were all set.  Now that camper got old, and not so towable, and nothing to tow it with anymore, no more big van, as only four kids live at home.  It seems like we've gone around in this circle, are on the downside of the slope.  

Finances are something I won't discuss here, but we've had some struggles, which I can't get into.  We're not giving in to anxiety or despair, but it's been challenging, I won't lie.  I choose to be extremely thankful and happy that we are getting this "new" truck.  It's all relative, for some people, this truck is nothing much.  To others, it would be a dream come true.    It is the sixth truck we've owned.  At least four of the previous ones met their demise by accident.  One was a horrible accident, in which Paul was returning to our church with three dozen pizzas for a youth meeting, and a young uninsured man was speeding and ran a stop sigh, plowed right into Paul, who thankfully was alone in the truck.  It knocked him unconscious, totaled his brand new dream truck, a Toyota Tundra.  He was okay, a bit sore and disoriented and with some concerning side effects for a while, but thankfully okay.  If he had brought the girls with him that day like he was going to, they would have been...well, let's not think about that.  It was hard that he lost that truck, because by the time we paid off the loan, we didn't have enough to replace it, so we got a Ford F-150.  I won't get into the details because it is both boring, and I can't remember it all, but a few more were smashed up, not our fault, like the car that ran the red light when Emily was borrowing one of the previous trucks...(the other driver was ironically a lady who had been visiting the very hospital that Emily worked in,  all day with her very sick husband, and was driving home in an exhausted daze, she couldn't apologize enough....but that truck was toast.  Thankfully no one was injured though!)

Here's a pic of the "new" beauty.  (I wanted Paul to stop and take his pic in front of it, but no way Jose, he was not doing that, the truck was parked right in front of the dealership, which is all windows and glass and filled with salesman...). I paused to take a pic and stepped in a dip in the parking lot and almost fell, so I just snapped a quick two pics and hurried to the car, hoping no one saw me almost fall, because that is the important part, not whether you twist your ankle or not.  

Our old, dearly departed truck had only two doors, which was a very large pain in the you-know.  This one will have much more room for the pups to stretch out in and get all hairy.  

So this is what we did on this cool rainy day...and I am very excited about it!!!!