A new addition to the family.."Alexis"

For a few days now, Ryan and Michael have been looking at cars online. We have bought 2 cars in the 12 years that we have been married, the Mazda and the suburban. Ryan has loved his "golden bullet" as the kids have dubbed it....his 98 Mazda Protege. It has been a really good car. We bought it in Oregon when we first moved to the mainland from Hawaii. I remember feeling amazed that we could buy this car without rust (a lot of the student cars in Hawaii are rusty as all get out.) The Mazda is a totally stripped down model. It has manual windows and door locks. It is a manual transmission. The previous owner did install a CD player in it so we were super excited when we bought it. It has given us 0 problems. Michael learned to drive a stick shift on it. It has been across the country and on many road trips. Well, the day has come that Ryan knew that he needed to get a newer car. He has poured over many websites researching his new golden bullet. Yesterday, we looked at 3 different dealerships. Michael, Ryan, Regan, and I started off at 9am We looked at the Cadillac CTS, a super cool car, we looked at the Acura TL...which was an experience in itself, and we looked at Lexus. The Acura was AMAZING! If you want a really, really good performance car, then you should look there. Naperville has a "Test track" for some of the dealerships here. It is it's own private test track that was designed by race car drivers and other experts for people buying and trying out new cars. We took a spin on it in the Acura and were AMAZED! The car dealer working with us was an ex-race car driver himself, so he took the car for a spin on the test track. Regan actually got a little car sick as well as myself. This guy was doing 360's like they were nothing on that car! We loved the TL, but felt that it wasn't the perfect fit for what Ryan was looking for. We ended up at the Lexus dealership...WOW is all I can say! We first test drove an LS which is their high end car in the Lexus line up. It was used, but stunning. I have never sat in such a posh car. I think the dealer was hoping we would buy it and showed it to us first as to make anything else seem less posh. The car originally tags at $75,000. Thank goodness it didn't sport that tag on it when we were looking at it. Even with the lower price tag than the original price, we weren't going to get the LS. We test drove an ES and then the GS which we ended up buying. It has a little more room in the back than the ES, but doesn't have the LS price tag. Michael, Regan, and I drove the suburban home and waited for Ryan to drive home in his new car. He came in the door at 9pm with a grin on his face. Maile has now dubbed the car, "Alexis." It really is a nice car. So quiet and super fast. We have to constantly look down at the speedometer to check our speed as we don't realize how fast we are going. We are super excited!!!