Update on my conflict

Well, we decided that with a couple of trips planned in the next 5 months, we really do need something reliable so we are dumping the old van. I am not really sad at all about this, it is old and yucky. The real hard part is the fact that we have had it paid for for many years, and now with our new purchase we will be burdened with debt. I guess I really was just sentimental about having some cash flow.

What to get was a very hard decision. It is not fun to be spending a lot of money with any uncertainty if this is actually the very best of your choices to meet your needs. One of our concerns is that we do go on long trips with all the kids. We need to be able to fit 8 people in the van. Ideally it would have enough room so that all the kids can have space to themselves to help alleviate some of the inevitable fighting that always occurs.

We thought something like this might be nice:

There are enough seats they can all have their own. The drivers are separated from the passengers, and if the kids behavior gets bad enough we can always threaten them with riding on the top.

But alas, these are a little hard to come by in Brentwood.

So I thought about this:

Just think what great shape I would be in after carting kids around town. And if they were being bad, I could make them peddle. It even has a luggage rack on top. But unfortunately, I don't think I would ever be in good enough shape to make it to Utah or Washington with less than a year driving time. (Work and school frown on taking that long for vacation)

Another option was:

There are enough seats. There is room to move around while driving. It comes with a stop sign which could be fun to just randomly pop out around town. And, if the payments get hard, we could always supplement our income by undercutting the fees the school district charges parents to bus their kids. But it wouldn't fit into our garage, and I didn't feel like getting the special bus driver, driver's license.

So finally we settled on this: A 2008 Toyota Sienna in a very pretty green color (All the boys hate the color, the girls love it. I won in the color battle.)

It was delivered to us last night. Now I will just live in fear of anything happening to it. We have already threatened the kids with bodily harm if they so much as get a drop or crumb or mark of any kind on it for the next 10 years. (Only sort of kidding, maybe not bodily harm, but definitely some kind of torment). And I get to spend the next couple of days figuring out how to work all the cool little extras that came with. What a great excuse not to do housework.