Some people have been puzzled by how we've managed to survive as a family of 5 in a 5-passenger car for the past three years. Since it seems like a lot of folks buy a minivan as soon as they find out they're expecting baby #2, I guess it might seem odd that we held out for so long. Honestly, it didn't really become an issue until the twins graduated to booster seats about a year ago. Whenever I took the boys somewhere in the car, I had to block out an extra 5 minutes dedicated exclusively to fishing around in the narrow crevice between the booster seat and Moses' carseat in a frustrating attempt to buckle the their seat belt one-handed. Times two.
So when Joe's friend and fellow guitar-player on the church worship team announced that his wife was expecting their third child a couple months ago, Joe decided that it'd be nice if we could give them the Santa Fe, a considerable step up from the 20-something-year-old Camry that his wife was currently driving. Their baby is due in August, so we figured we had all Summer to find a nice used van that fit our budget to replace the Santa Fe.
Then while we were visiting Granny and Babo over St. Patrick's Day weekend, they offered to watch the boys while we went out for a test-drive or two. It seemed like a good idea since neither of us had ever been behind the wheel of our top two contenders- the Odyssey and the Sienna. We assured the boys that we were just going to look at cars, and that we certainly would not buy one that day. Upon arriving at the Honda dealership, we soon found ourselves test-driving a souped-up 2010 Odyssey, but balked in discouragement when we learned the price. It just seemed like a lot of money for a used vehicle. Next, we looked at a 2012 Odyssey that cost slightly less than the 2010, but didn't have leather seats. My sincere attempt to be open-minded could not overcome the fact that I'd had my heart set on leather seats for the longest time. All of our couches are leather, and for good reason- I can only imagine the amount of destruction that three boys would wreak on fabric upholstery.
So, we cut to the chase and told the head honcho at the dealership to show us the cheapest 2012 Odyssey with leather seats that they had. He asked us what color we wanted, and I told him we didn't care about the color, all we wanted was leather seats and a low price. So he said, how about this one, and gestured toward the showroom model right beside us. "Sure," we said. What I didn't tell him was that it was the exact same Smoky Topaz color that I'd picked out on Honda's website when I "built my own" Odyssey online just for fun a few weeks earlier!
We were so unprepared to buy a car that day that amid negotiations, Joe had to leave the dealership and drive to the nearest branch of our bank and use the ATM to check the balance in our checking account so we'd know exactly how much we could put down. In the end, they offered to sell us the brand new showroom model, with leather interior and only 5 miles on the odometer, for the same price as the used 2010, which was nearly $4K less than MSRP. With the monthly payments working out to be just a little more than what we were saving each month from our recent mortgage refinance, we were sold!
The boys have been just as excited about our new van as we are. Caleb has written about our new van in his journal almost every day at school since we got it, each day discussing a new feature, such as its 8 seats or the fact that it is "zero years old". They fight over who gets to push the buttons that open and close the doors, and get a big kick out of talking to Daddy on the phone via the van's bluetooth technology. The salesman had assured us that the person on the other end would only be able to hear front-seat passengers, but our boys are apparently a loud exception.
At first we installed Moses' carseat in the middle row and the twins' booster seats in the back row, but Moses sulked and begged to sit next to his brothers. We thought he might enjoy a reprieve from being flanked by his big brothers in tight quarters, but apparently not. One of the countless nice things about the 2012 Odyssey is that the middle row of seats can be adjusted not only front to back, but also side to side. So we now have all three boys across the middle row of seats, and there is plenty of room in between each seat for the twins to buckle themselves in. So now, a task that used to consume 5 minutes every time we got in the car takes me no time at all because the boys can do it themselves! And in the mornings as we're heading out the door to school, the boys can open the sliding doors with the push of a button from inside the house. I used to give them the Santa Fe key and tell them to go unlock the car and get in, hoping that they wouldn't lose the keys somewhere between the house and the car, and if the keys did make it to the car, that no one would get knocked in the head by a swinging car door. As you can imagine, our mornings are much less stressful now.
And as fond as we are of our new Odyssey, parting with the trusty Santa Fe was bittersweet. It was the first car that we'd purchased together as a married couple after Joe's Taurus drowned in Hurricane Isabel. It had been with us through four moves and brought home our three babies. And it really was in good shape, with 100K miles down, and according to other 2003 Santa Fe owners, at least 100K more miles to go. But any sadness that we might have felt was washed away on Monday evening when we saw the huge grin sweep across our friend's face as she drove it away into the sunset.
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