The long and detailed story about the why’s and how’s of our van drama

Where to begin?

I guess I’ll start at the beginning.

Two Saturdays ago we were at the Orlando Temple:

Due to bad traffic it had taken us an extra hour to get there.  So, on the drive home we decided to take the Northern route home through the middle of nowhere.  While driving through the middle of nowhere Ben mentioned the car wasn’t accelerating.  Our speed slowly decreased until we were at a dead stop on the side of the road.  No one was behind us luckily.  “Hmmm….this isn’t good,” thought Ben and I.  We sat there for a few minutes and then tried to start it back up.  We made it 100 feet and then it stopped letting us accelerate.  Ben looked under the hood and did all those manly type things.  We tried to drive it again.  We made it 100 feet again.  He looked under the hood again.  We tried to drive it again.  We made it 100 feet again.

We decided the van was, in fact, broken and decided to call roadside assistance.  Only problem: no cell service.  We really were in the middle of nowhere!  So, to make a long story short my mom picked up me and the kids two hours later.  Ben, my dad, and Mike waited with the van until the tow truck arrived a little thereafter.  It was towed to a transmission place in Dade City where they informed us at a later date that the transmission needed to be replaced which would cost $3000.

The value of the van is much lower than that and so we decided it was time to part with our good and faithful friend.  We listed it on Craigslist and the ad looked something like this:

2001 Honda Odyssey for sale.  220,000 miles, no working transmission, needs to be towed away.

Doesn’t sound like a very appealing to me but we’ve had at least 10 inquiries.  We forgot to mention in the ad that the CD player and tape player don’t work either because our kids thought they were their piggy banks.  We’ve lost a few potential buyers after that disclosure.  Also, a new dent has appeared in the bank right fender since it’s been sitting at Dade City Transmission. Oh well.  We hope to have it sold by the end of the day today.  It’s surprisingly sad for me to say good bye to our good ‘ole van.  I actually really liked my old van.  It’s nice in a way to have a vehicle that you can live in.  If that thing got sandy, dirty, scratched or anything we never cared.  I’m going to have to start caring and being careful now.

Moving on….

The first week I was without transportation.  No fun 🙁

The second week we still hadn’t made a decision so my mom and dad graciously shared one of their two vehicles with us.  I would have continued to suffer but I had to have a way to get Sadie to/from preschool and we had a doctor’s appointment to get McKay’s cast off one day.  So I really did need something.  Thanks parents!

My kids love Mimi’s Van.  They helped me give it a good bath.  We’ve had really warm weather lately and the kids were sweating so I let them get wet.  They had the time of their life.

This week we finally made our final decision to get the 2013 Sienna.  It was a long process for us.  Tons of number crunching, test driving, research, phone calls, and waiting.  This was the first car I’ve ever bought.  The Civic was my graduation present, and the Odyssey we bought from my parents  so there was no real shopping to be done.

Thursday night we went into Clearwater Toyota to sign all the paperwork.  I was actually a lot more excited than I expected to be.  The kids were, too.

So, this is the newest member of the family.  We haven’t picked out a name for her yet.  We got a steal of a deal, we think.  They literally drove her off the showroom floor:

My parents drove up at the end to help watch the kids so we could focus and then we went out to dinner together.  What would we do without them?

So, there you  have it – the long and detailed story about why’s and how’s of our van drama.  I’m not going to reread all that so if there are typos please just overlook them.