Zoom Zoom Zoom!

It has been a BUSY week for the Blackburn family. First off I need to announce that Oma and Opa Hannesschlager will be MOVING TO THE DC AREA this Thanksgiving!!! YAY!!! I am so very excited about this news. It has been a long time coming for all of us. It has all happened so quickly too. My parents listed their house in Colleyville, TX on Oct 2nd and accepted an offer and signed contracts on Oct 16th. EXACTLY 2 WEEKS LATER!!! OMG!!! They also put an offer down on a house here in DC and signed a contract ALSO on Oct 16th. And to top it all off, Oct 16th is my brother, Jim's, birthday. WHAT A SPECIAL DAY!!! I definitely feel God's hand in all this to make it all happen so easily and smoothly. Did I say how happy I am? :)

Another special thing happened on Oct 16th as well...WE BOUGHT A NEW CAR!!! Our current car was a Honda CRV but it was a lease and was up next month so we have been shopping around for a while trying to decide what we were going to do. Do we buy the lease, give it back to the bank and buy a new car, or sell the CRV ourselves (pay off the bank for the lease) and buy an new car. We 1st decided that we would buy a new car and decided on what car we wanted but then there was still the decision on giving the car back or selling it ourselves. The bank had already given us the residual value of the car so we knew what we had to sell the car for so we decided to take it to Carmax and get an estimate on how much we could sell it to them for. FYI...if you have never done this then I would HIGHLY recommend looking into it if you are ever looking to sell you car. It is so easy, quick, and painless. We have sold 3 cars now to them and they have always given us more than what we expected or wanted. Once the estimate came back it was $2000 over the residual value of what the bank wanted for the CRV. SOLD! It was a no brainer for us so we sold the CRV to Carmax and went out and bought our new car. We got a 2009 Mazda 5 and LOVE IT! It is roomy, gets GREAT gas mileage, and has the sliding side doors like a minivan. Can't say enough good things about it. :) Here is a picture of it and the color we got. Cool, huh?!