Okay, we took the plunge...we bought a mini van yesterday!!! After we found out we were pregnant, we tried to fit three car seats in my Explorer, but we were 3 inches short of them all fitting! 3 inches!!! We tried taking a seat out and placing the twins in the 3rd row, leaving the new kid in the 2nd row, but now I had no place for my stroller. That wasn't going to work. We tried every which way, but nothing worked. We looked at getting a bigger SUV and were leaning toward a Navigator, but we wouldn't be able to park both cars in the garage (John would have been parking in the street, I would have kept the garage :-). We didn't like that idea either so I bravely said a mini van was the way to go. It would be smaller than an SUV allowing both cars to fit in the garage and we could arrange the seats easily so we could fit 3 car seats, plus it has an amazingly large cargo area. So, we grudgingly set out to find the perfect mini van. A poll of PAMOMs showed the Odyssey and Sienna at the top of the list so we checked those out first. We test drove an Odyssey and I was so disappointed. It had anything and everything I could possibly want...dvd, nav system, voice commands for everything in the car, etc., but IT WAS A MINI VAN!!!!! We continued to look and John found the perfect Odyssey, but we just couldn't get past the fact it was a MINI VAN! We were going to go and purchase the car Monday (last day for a lot of the car sales), but before we did that, I wanted to test drive the Sienna just so we would know what that was like. John stayed with the kids and I went to test drive by myself...it was great!!! I loved it! It didn't have as many extras as the Odyssey, but I liked the inside a TON better. John couldn't believe it - they were essentially the same car. After all the hours he had spent researching and charting Odysseys, I was changing the car on him. The Sienna is a bit more so we couldn't afford the dvd or nav system, but it's still really nice. After I got home he set out to find a better deal on a Sienna. He went to a couple of dealerships to no avail. He'd find something and then in the negotiation process, something would fall apart. I told him the one I test drove that morning was being held for me. He could go there and get that one. After several hours he did, and we now have a brand new car. I really like it, surprisingly. We're going on a little road trip this week so I'll get to put it to the test and see how it does. John was great during this whole process - if he actually billed out his hours for the research he put in before we bought the car, we wouldn't have been able to afford any type of car. All our money would have gone towards the research!
The kids' first ride in the new van...Jake was a little scared by the automatic doors and cried the first couple of times it happened. But by the end of our errands today he had warmed up to it.
It looks a bit purply here, but it's really a dark blue/gray.
It's going to take some getting used to with the shifter on the dashboard like that.
1 comment:
All the cool moms drive mini-vans. ;)
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