Fathers Are So Special

Yesterday was Father's Day.

It was also the first Father's Day for my dear friend without her father on earth.

My heart hurt for her as I saw all of the Facebook posts about awesome daddy's.

I can't imagine how hard yesterday must have been for her and her mom.

I know I would certainly have a difficult time on Father's Day

if I didn't have these awesome fathers on the earth.

I have learned wonderful and great lessons from each of them.

 

 

 

This is my father-in-law, Rich. I have known him for more than half of my life. He has taught me how to slalom water-ski. Entwined within those slalom lessons were great demonstrations of patience, encouragement, and perseverance (he was willing to continue to drive the boat long after I was ready to give up). He has also taught me how to not take myself too seriously as I watched his example of goofiness. He and my mother-in-law raised a wonderful son who I am honored to call my husband.

This is my dad, Craig. I have to be honest and say that during my growing up years, we had some major bumps in the road. Until my junior year, I wasn't sure how committed he was to being a dad. His job kept him very busy and away from the family. And then when he did re-commit himself to our family and being a dad, I wasn't sure I wanted or needed him. It was rough. But, he did teach me many things. He taught me to be strong and independent. He sparked a love of travel in me. Because of him, I am a connoisseur of cheese and other fine food. However, the most important thing I learned from my dad is that the grace of God is very real; that Christ's atonement and its redemptive power can absolutely change the heart. It was a hard, but beautiful and important lesson. I am so grateful that he is my dad.



This is my man.

He has given me two beautiful children and a wonderful life.

I have learned many things from him.

He helped me develop a love of being fit.



He taught me that there is never a problem that can't be solved.

He taught me that a problem to be solved, should never be more important than a person to love.

He has shown me the meaning of absolute love and devotion.

He has helped me learn how to not be a yeller (although I'm still a loud talker).

He calms my crazy and builds me up.

The list could go on and on.

I certainly hit the jackpot all those years ago

when I sat down next to him on the tailgate of a pick-up truck

at the drive-in theatre.

My New "Love"

I wasn't going to buy a car, let alone a new car, so soon, but David insisted that I get it taken care of as soon as possible. Matter of fact, he refused to consider paying off the house until I had purchased another car. I knew he was serious, so I got serious about looking.

I swear, buying cars these days is so much better than it used to be when you had to sit at the dealership for hours on end negotiating and waiting and negotiating and waiting. I hated that so much, even though David was the one who always handled the negotiating. But with the internet, you can do all of the negotiating via e-mail. It's awesome.

So, first I decided that Subaru had proved their reliability and safety so I was going to stick with Subaru. Then I did some searching through autotrader.com, kbb.com, and cargurus.com to see what kind of inventory was within a 500 mile radius of where I live. I sent out some e-mail inquiries to the dealerships that had cars that cargurus had identified as "hot buys". Then I waited for the responses.

While I was waiting, I went to the local Subaru dealership to drive a couple of different Subaru models that I was interested in. Carson really wanted me to look at the Impreza and David wanted me to stick with the Legacy. And I wanted to check out the Crosstrek. While the Impreza and Crosstrek were fun to drive and were more "dog-friendly", neither one had a power seat that could be adjusted up and down. Their seats do go up and down, but you have to manually jack them up or down and since there is a big discrepancy between where I have to have the seat and where the rest of the drivers in our family need the seat, the lack of a power seat was a dealer breaker. So I was back to the Legacy.

Initially I had inquired regarding used cars, but the inventory was low. And because of the law of supply and demand, low inventory means little to no negotiation on prices. That was frustrating. I tried everything to get people to move, but they were pretty set on the listed price. There was a small glimmer of hope for buying a used car when I found two dealers who had service vehicle loaners that had just rotated out of their fleet that were available for purchase. Unfortunately, by this time I had broken Dave Ramsey's number one rule (don't drive cars outside of your price range) and had fallen in love with a new 2015 Subaru Legacy 2.5i Limited.

So knowing that I was out of my price range, I had to negotiate hard. I found a dealer in Lewiston, ID who had what I wanted with all of the bells and whistles and so I pitted them against the local dealership where I had test driven the car. Kendall Subaru in Lewiston was hungry for my business and would have done just about anything to get my business, unfortunately, they couldn't speed up delivery of the car and that was the deal breaker. I wound up going with the local dealership; however, if I wasn't in a time crunch for a car, I would have gone with Kendall. They were that great to work with. And I anticipate that our next purchase (whenever that may be), will be with them.

The silver lining with Kendall's eagerness to have my business, is that I was able to get the local dealership way below where they wanted to be because they were desperate to beat Kendall. I got the car for below invoice price and had $500 worth of options added at no charge. I felt pretty great about successfully negotiating this deal all on my own.

And I am in love with my new Subaru.