The Slow Death of the D40

My Nikon D40 is dying and I am already in mourning.  This camera was carefully saved for and pined after for several months before we finally bought it to be able to take wonderful photos of our new bundle of joy, our first born son.  Having the camera actually take the photo when you pushed the button rather than the infuriating shutter lag we had been dealing with on our old point & shoot was a whole new experience for us and we were immediately hooked on the world of the DSLR. 

Fast forward three years and that 6.1 megapixel thing of glory is quickly becoming an outdated and exhausted piece of equipment.  I have taken a LOT of photos in three years.  Two kids will do that. To further complicate matters, I have taken a recent interest in actually learning how to take good photographs and to use my camera to its full potential.  I have learned about things like aperture, ISO, white balance, exposure compensation, and (Glory Be, Hallelujah!) Photoshop. 

Suddenly I am taking more photos than ever and my camera is tired.

She's started to show she's worn out by leaving little warning signals in my photos.  If you look closely, you can see a line running across the length of this photo of Micah and his Grandma. (It runs right through her earring and all the way across the photo)  This makes me so sad because I love, love, love that shot. 

This nasty mystery line is showing up on more and more of my shots!

It's even darker in this photo of Isaiah from just last week:

Let's face it.  When you use something a lot, it is going to wear out.  No electronic device lasts forever (as we recently discovered with our 6 year old laptop).  My trusty D40 only has slightly more than 20,000 actuations (translation: number of times the shutter has released) on it, so she's got some life left in her yet.  The problem is that I'm noticing the shutter is starting to slow on me and that blue line is driving me nuts.
Here's my problem.  Now that I know a teeny tiny bit about working with a DSLR camera's functions, I can no longer be satisfied with a low-level camera with a kit lens.  I need greater ISO capability!  Higher megapixels!  Greater white balance control!  A lens with a greater aperture range!  A display on the top of my camera where I can quickly and easily tinker with all these settings!

Wait....did you hear that?  Funny.  I thought I just heard the sound of a cash register ringing like five times.  Not a good sound for someone doing the Total Money Makeover. 

I'm still holding out hope that I'll win one of The Pioneer Woman's giveaways of a Nikon D90.  Don't even get me started on the new lenses I'm already drooling over.