Michele - I have a friend with a Rav4 and an employee with the Hyundai. Both of them love their car and have had very little trouble with them. The Hyundai is quite a bit bigger than the Rav4, but I notice that the new Rav4s are larger than previous years.

Shannon - nice to hear your DH likes his new style CRV. I don't think they look like CRV's any more. Plus, one of the feature I like the most is the sideways opening back door, and the new ones don't have that.

Back to budgets....

Michele - I have a friend who drove a Rav 4, she had similar recurring problems to what it sounds like you had with your Honda, and as I remember it was a little smallish. OTOH, I had a coworker with one who loved it and had no trouble. I had a Santa Fe as a rental car once and liked it, I also have driven the Mitsubishi Outlander & the Subaru Outback as rentals and liked both of them. DH was seriously considering an Outback when he bought his Honda...

Oh yeah, about the SUV's -- I have a Subaru Forester which I absolutely love. It's not as big as most other SUV's, but it is usually rated extremely high for safety and reliability. My dog has plenty of room to spare in the back so I'm sure you could fit two dogs in it. (Of course, my dog also likes to sit in the back seat better than in the trunk, so he jumps over all the time and drives me nuts, but that's beside the point...)

Michele~Hyundai have gotten excellent reviews. I had a boss with a Toyota 4Runner that should have qualified for the Lemon Law (he tried, but didn't get it). I think they had to replace the engine twice in it's first year. I'm kind of down on Toyota for that reason.

My hair pulling has ceased for a couple more days. I can't do anything until Washington processes my Master Business application which gives me a UBI which is necessary on ALL the other forms I have to fill out. It's weird, though, because we're incorporated, we're actually supposed to file with the Secretary of State before doing the Master Business App, but you can't do that without the UBI. It makes no sense to me at all, so I'm doing it the way that makes the most sense.

Oh, and since we got this job, and were about 99% sure we got another big, big one (the only uncertainty is the fact that they have not sent the contract) it looks like I'll be getting a new car soon. Did I tell you all about the Jag? I'm super excited!

Yes, but I have 200 pounds of dog!!

Michele, my dog is 85lbs so he's not little! It might be a little snug with 200lbs of dog, but it may be worth checking out anyway.

I realized the other day that I am like those people who can't stop talking about their kids, except I'm always talking about my dog. He is my fur-baby and I love him so much! I often worry about what I'm going to do when he gets old. He's 5 right now and perfectly healthy, but since he's big, he probably won't live much past 10 or 12. My poor baby!

Michele, my friend has two Great Danes and a Golden Retriever/Standard Poodle mix and has a Mercedes SUV that holds them all.

Sheila-- wish I had the $$ for a Mercedes!

But.... I did buy a cute little red Toyota RAV4 this morning!! Now I need to work on getting rid of my leased car as I currently have 3 cars (counting dh's truck). So much fun getting a new car!!

Michele -congrats on the new car! The Rav4 is cute.

Nice choice Michele! And I love red cars.

Thanks Pat!!
It has all of the bells and whistles except a GPS. I get hopelessly lost all the time so I spent today researching GPS units. I ordered one from amazon and expect to get it Tuesday. Hopefully I won't get lost before then!