Ok, so you all know I said goodbye to the Jeep in my usual dramatic fashion. Now it’s time to introduce you to Sasha, our new (to us) mini van.

Miles looks bored here, but I assure you, he thinks Sasha is just as awesome as I do. I don’t care who thinks I’m a nerd, vans are freaking awesome. I actually would have been marginally ok with continuing to drive around two kids in our Accord, but we rented a van last year when we made a huge Ikea run and once our booties slid comfortably into the captian’s chairs, that swagger wagon had us at hello.

So for an entire year I have pined for a van. I cut out a photo of a van and put it on my vision board. I lamented with fists in the air during every pain in the ass maneuver into the Accord, “If only I had a van!” Every grocery run seem to be an exercise of me just thinking of every way a van would make the weekly torture assignment into something actually pleasurable. One could say I manifested a new van into my life “The Secret” style, but I have a feeling my husband would say I just wouldn’t shut up about it until he finally went and got the van.

So we got our 2008, Honda Odyssey (even after typing that word into my search engine 9 million times I STILL struggle to spell it) with leather, but no DVD player. It’s actually really hard to find one without a DVD player that still has leather and that’s actually what we wanted. Miles is already asking for TV enough when we are home, the van is the last place I want to hear him whining for more. So even though other parents think we are crazy, we are a no tv in the car family. (At least for now.)

This has seriously been a life changing purchase for us. Even Miles is thrilled. We found this van at a great little dealership in Ohio so I stayed home with the kids while John took care of getting it and bringing it back. Miles was asleep when he brought it home and when he woke up in the morning and we told him there was a van in the garage it was seriously like Christmas morning. Miles was hopping all around, testing out the automatic doors and exclaiming that we had picked out his favorite color!

Getting a van is like that feeling you have after wearing tight jeans all night and you strip them off the minute you get home to snuggle up in comfy sweat pants. It’s glorious. Yep, my van just might be the vehicle equivalent of sweat pants and I love it.

To wrap this up, the van is awesome for these reasons:

-Doors that open for me. People breeze by me all day without nary a glance at my struggle to get a stroller and four year old through a storefront door but I can make my van open the door for me every time. Talk about making your own happiness.

-I can put Jocelyn in my baby carrier (the one I wear) inside the van instead of outside in the wind, rain or snow. For this reason alone I wish we had gotten the van MONTHS ago. I grocery shop with Joss in the carrier as Chicco carseats don’t fit on top of grocery carts. So this has been so life changing, especially with this awful weather.

-The Accord could only fit the four of us with NO room for passengers. So that means we can take a friend or my mom on an outing with us without taking a second car. (This was a huge pain in the butt when Uncle Mark visited. So yay! We can all go together now.)

-The Jeep was not suitable for driving kids around, and I really stunk at driving a stick, so we now officially have two cars that I can drive and have kids in. Yay! (Now we just get to drop bank on another carseat. The spending is endless.)

-We can put as many strollers in the back as we want and groceries, a christmas tree or any old vintage chair that I find in a thrift shop along the way. Garage sale season? WATCH OUT, here I come.

-Ikea runs are now possible when ever we want as we finally have room to bring things home.

-We have an extended family beach vacay this spring and I would not have survived driving 14 hours crammed in an Accord.

-This van is so much safer for my family. Let’s pause here and take a look at my family who I want to keep safe. Awwwwwww. There’s Joss in nothing but a diaper again. That poor girl. Quick, someone send me a bunch of baby girl clothes, size 6-12 months! 😉

Yes, I’m now a minivan mom. I would say I’m embarrassed if driving it wasn’t so freakin awesome.