Our New Van!!!

Well, we are officially minivan owners!!!  I guess that means we're really deep into this parenting thing.  We've discussed buying one for a few years now, but we've been holding off because they are expensive and we really didn't feel that two children justified a minivan when we had two paid off cars that worked just fine.  But, we're hoping that three kids are in our future, and three carseats don't fit in either of our cars (at least not properly).  AND, we are currently planning a big road trip to Myrtle Beach in September which got us thinking that the space would be really nice.  So, knowing that we're hopefully going to need one soon anyway and we could use the space for the trip, we decided to go ahead and start our search.

Finding our "perfect" minivan was not as easy as we thought.  As our search went on, our list of what we wanted became more specific.  We definitely knew we wanted used.  After reading Consumer Reports, Josh decided that we would only look at Toyota Siennas (after I had spent a lot of time looking at Hondas!).  To stay in our price range, we knew we wanted some extras (like power doors) but not too many extras (like leather and DVD).  We decided to concentrate on fewer options but also fewer miles.

We tried hard to find the perfect balance of year, model, and mileage to get the biggest bang for our buck.  I found LOTS of Siennas around our price range, but there was always one thing that didn't fit our wish list.  One night, being a little sarcastic, I punched in a 175 mile radius on the Toyota Certified site.... and found our perfect van.  The only bad news was that it was north of Chicago!  So, I didn't really think we'd go for it.  But, the more we looked at it, the more we realized it was just what we wanted, and the price was more competitive than you could ever get at dealerships around here.  So, after talking with the dealership, we made the drive up and purchased it!

We got a black 2009 Toyota Sienna LE (with power doors!) with 35k miles, just what we wanted.  It seemed to have been well taken care of by a local owner.  All of the service records were available and had been done on time.  It was traded in only because the full warranty was up.  The good news is that Toyota certified it, so it has another year of full warranty plus three and a half more years of powertrain warranty.

I was very happy that we got just what we wanted and that the price was right!  I love that by waiting 3 years for someone else to put 35k miles on it, we saved about $12,000 off a new one.  That's a deal in my book!



Since the drive up was over 3 hours and we were at the dealership for 3 hours, we had decided to make a night of it and get a hotel room.  We were both so glad we did.  We were beat and it was SO HOT.  They were saying it was actually the hottest weekend in Chicago history!  We went to Gino's for pizza which was yummy, but the a/c couldn't keep up.  We almost couldn't eat it was so hot in there!  Then we took the kids to the mall and used some of our Disney gift cards for some new T-Shirts!

The next day, we took advantage of the hotel pool and then headed back to the mall for a little more shopping.

 Then we had lunch at Portillo's and headed home.

Yep, she's wearing a headband and a tiara... my little accessory girl!  I told her she could pick something at Claire's, and she chose the tiara-big surprise there!



Jake LOVED the chocolate cake shake and was quite protective of it.  Hannah said, "Jacob, the shake is for everyone to share.  Don't drink it all!"

Since we didn't trade a car in, we had to drive two cars home!  Josh drove the new minivan with the kids because I didn't want to drive it for the first time in crazy traffic, so I drove the Santa Fe.  We sold Josh's trusty Honda Accord to Betsy to get her started at her new job this fall!  We hope that she gets lots of use out of it.  And I hope to get at least ten years out of this van!