I've been doing some reading online about SWA. So, it seems the flights are not truly sold out, but that they want to get seats filled at Anytime fare and then open up more Wanna Get Away fares to fill seats as needed on popular flights. I'm sure there are many reasons the flights show as sold out right when they just opened up the schedule, so this sounds like a possibility. Would love to know the reasons from someone in the airline industry, lol. Oh well, though, tickets booked anyway, hotel reservations made! I'm funding the vacation fund each month to have the price of the hotel paid by then but my price is $1178 for 8 nights so not bad and have until spring break to pay it.
Also, Christmas is a little over two months away. Seemed terrible at the time in January to start putting money aside for Christmas right when one ended, but now I'm glad I started that savings right away at the beginning of the year and will do it again next year. Even if it's $50, $75 some months I still keep it going so Christmas doesn't look so overwhelming to me. I don't shop early, I'll start looking right after Thanksgiving.
I have a Volkswagen Tiguan. So for us it isn't so much about fitting 2 car seats, but being able to fit 2 cars seats plus our bird in his carrier. When we go to my parent's house, we always bring our bird with us because they have an extra bird cage for him and it saves us money on bird sitting costs. There is no way that his carrier will fit between two carseats in the middle seat of the back row.
We also have been taking weekend trips where we are taking the bike trailer for DD so that we can go biking. To get everything to fit into DH's wagon, we need to have one of the seats lowered so we can store more items. My SUV probably wouldn't even fit everything in if we tried. And neither car would fit everything if there were 2 car seats.
We are looking at the VW Atlas with the captain's chairs in the middle row. When we dropped DH's car off for service a few months ago, we took a look at it and both really liked it. I sat in the third row and it was very comfortable, even for an adult. We are leaning towards the captain's chairs because I remember my brother and I hitting each other in the backseat of my mom's car when we were kids. That stopped when she got a van with captinan's chairs and it was harder to reach. We like that it takes regular gas too, as my current car takes premium. And the Atlas gets about the same mileage as the Tigaun, so fuel costs would likely be much less.
My current car is a 2013 and it's current appraisal is around $10k-$14k, so we would hopefully be able to get a decent return on it when we are ready to upgrade. My goal is to save up some money over the next 2 years for a down payment and to keep the monthly payments close to what we pay for DH's car right now.
I just looked at the Atlas yesterday! It's great! And the same thing, captains chairs! I'm looking specifically for a vehicle to replace mine with captains chair, or a van. I have captains chairs in my current car GMC and love the feature, also this is where my dog sits on car rides, lol. She has to be lifted in and out, she can't jump up or down, and is heavy. The few times I've transported kids' friends also the easy access to the third row was great, and also have used it quite a few times to haul things, such as able to haul IKEA boxes that need to get put together, etc. Very rare, of course, but just pointing out I didn't need help for someone else to come pick stuff up. My car also went through the two car seat phase, worked out great, tons of space in the third row for groceries.
I need a new car as mine now needs a new transmission. I could replace it, but the fix cost is about the exact value of what my car is worth, and can't guarantee something else then will go wrong. I already know I need new brakes, steering wheel issue also, so anyway we've just decided reluctantly my car is past it's prime. It's a personal choice some may choose to throw in another transmission and keep fixing, but I don't want to go that route. I have been car shopping every type of car model that fits my view for 7 seater this week and really very undecided.
We now owe a total of just over $5400 on credit cards. If we hadn't bought a house and needed to buy appliances we'd owe about $2000ish less. Stupid appliances. Granted this is about $5000 less than what we owed at the beginning of last year, so I guess I should be excited by the progress. Depending on what we get back during tax season i'll either pay off/down more of the credit card debt, or my husbands student loans. 
And in the spirit of October i'm attaching a couple pics of the decorations I put up over the weekend.
Thanks for sharing!
