Meet Ellie

Our swagger wagon

Here she is! Our newest addition arrived home with us last night after a long, laborious day of test driving, price negotiating, paperwork and a long drive home. We are more than happy with our decision and even, in retrospect, glad that the Dossett "sales manager" was so disinterested in us when we tried to buy a different car (see previous post).

This is the car that we had wanted all along, and it ended up being the best deal of all the cars we saw over the long weekend. Sarah Beth loves it and immediately christened the back seat by jumping up and down on it while singing, "I love it, I love it, I love it, I love iiiiiiiiiiiit!" (yes, Laura, she was singing to the tune of the cousin song.)

The back seat had been previously untouched as the first owner clearly did not have children. I made the comment that I suspected as much and then confirmed my suspicions when searching for a seatbelt for SB's car seat. The seatbelts were nowhere to be found, and I began to worry that there were none. We finally discovered them under the seats, and after much exertion, we were able to dislodge them from the factory wraps.

Anyway, SB has done her best to mudify as much of the backseat as possible, but I am doing my best to keep it nice and clean despite an active, hungry 2 year old.

If you are searching for a good family car, I would highly recommend the Mitsubishi Endeavor. It is ranked in the top 10 of SUVs. And I searched for that information in the most scientific way possible:

I googled it.

I typed in "best suv" and selected the first link. According to suv.reviewitonline.net, the Endeavor ranks as #4 in their top 10 list of the best sports utility vehicles. So it must be true. Here are a list of pros and cons that I have come up with for this thing:

PROS:
Plenty of room
Drives great
Looks great
V6 engine gives enough power without the gas guzzling you get with a V8
I hear "hot babysitter" a lot while driving it

CONS:
No auxiliary plug for an mp3 player.

I know. That is not very Raven. You might scoff at that as a disappointment, but for Jack and me it seemed to be the only criterion we were concerned with when looking at cars. Every time we got inside a car, while the dealer is pointing out the sunroof, leather seats and other pricey add ons, we immediately checked for an auxiliary port. If there was not one, we both mentally scratched the car off of our list. I can't believe how many newer model cars do not have that!!

I know it seems like a silly criterion, but there are a few reasons why we felt like we needed this one thing. First of all, we take a lot of trips, and we need good music for the long hours in the car. We both have music wizard apps on our phones that allow us to download any song we want for free. The only thing I have not been able to find on this search engine is some old school Destiny's Child. There. I said it. Don't judge me because your musical tastes are not as advanced as mine.

Another reason we need this port is for the navigation system. Again, our phones come in handy with the turn by turn GPS that we use on a pretty regular basis. You can plug in the phone through the auxiliary mp3 porthole, fire up your music and listen as loud as you like. (If you are like Jack, then you like your rock n roll turned up to 11.) Then when a turn is coming up, the navigation system pauses the music and pipes in just long enough to tell you that you need to turn left in 1/2 mile on Interstate 59, then it goes right back to the music. So you never have to worry about missing a turn while you are enjoying "Can you pay my bills" at full blast.

While I am on the subject, let me just promo the Android phone for a minute. For me, it is a product that ranks right up there with Tilex. Jack got one last year and has loved it since first sight. When I finally had to trade in my beloved blackberry last month, Jack insisted I try the droid. Lucky for me, they had just put out their newest model: The Incredible. It truly is, as the commercials say, nothing short of its name.

I already mentioned the free music feature and the turn by turn navigation system, all of which can be run through your car stereo for maximum efficiency. And of course if you get a phone call while listening to your music and running the navigation system, the music pauses, you can opt to answer or decline, and if you answer, the music stays paused and your conversation automatically takes place hands free via the speakerphone, with your conversation partner coming through the stereo. The navigation system will interrupt your convo to remind you of a turn and the music comes back after you hang up the phone.

The new Incredible model is considerably faster and is also more lightweight than the original, and one function I love is that you can talk to text message. I am not fond of the virtual keyboard, since my fingers always seem to touch the wrong button, but with the talk to text function, I can just tell the phone what I want to do. I can also voice search Google or speak my emails. It also has way better web access than my blackberry. I have yet to find a page that it will not access.

If only it had Destiny's Child.