With all the snow we've had again this winter, I have been obsessed with getting a new vehicle - one that has 4WD or AWD so I don't get stuck in it. Even with my new tires, I could not drive my van up our driveway in the snow so I keep imagining getting stuck in the snow with the kids anywhere here on the plateau with all of these hills. It snowed again today (but no accumulation except on my car in the church parking lot while I was at MOPS, thankfully) but I kept thinking "How will I get to guitar lessons in the snow?!" I have things to do, places to go, people to see and the snow cannot stand in my way!

I've looking at SUV's because minivans do not have 4WD/AWD options. Now, with hauling all of the baseball and hockey equipment around a sedan will not work. I want something that has three rows of seats but where the boys could still comfortably sit in the middle row for long distances (thinking about camping now). And, it has to have a hitch that is HIGH off the ground so the bike rack won't scrape going up and down driveways. (I cannot take another Stephen hissy fit over that - yes I called him "crabby" in that blahg entry but it was a full-blown hissy fit that lasted the whole drive from here to Lake Wenatchee State Park!).

Just this week the Consumers Report Car edition came out so I have been poring through it, dreaming of a new vehicle. There are a lot of SUV's that I like that are recommended by CR (and some that are not). I already envision myself driving around in a cool, new vehicle with vanity plates that say something like PEZ ME or IFRGNROCK (666-PEZ is already taken). The car will be blue with black interior, a great sound system so I can blast Green Day and P!NK and my bike rack sitting high off the ground. Oh, and of course it will have a GPS in it so that I will never get lost.

So that's my dream car (which is really not at all a "car"). I guess I'll just keep fantasizing about it for now because at this point, I really do not want to $pend money on one (never mind thinking about the $$ we've lost due to the stock market cra$h). It will stay a dream...along with my Hawaiian vacation.