more changes

After six years of happily driving my Civic into the ground, we finally decided that an upgrade was in order. Actually, Henry decided it for us, because all five of us wouldn't fit in either of our vehicles at one time. We did all of our research, and talked to people about their minivans, and the week before Henry was born -- you know, back when we thought we had plenty of time -- we test-drove a Honda Odyssey and really liked it. We also learned from our semi-local dealer that Odysseys were in short supply. That dealer only had one, and it just wasn't our speed (so to speak). They promised they would have more in the next couple of weeks, so we decided to wait, but then Henry came along and complicated matters. So we went online and checked all the dealer inventories until we found one that we wanted, and Monday morning, after dropping Liam and Max off at school and taking Henry to the lab for blood tests, we hit the road and drove to not-so-nearby (90 minutes away) Highland, Indiana, where we proceeded to spend the ENTIRE day purchasing our new minivan. Why does it take so long? It's a complete mystery to me. All I know is that we had to lay down the law about when we had to leave in order to get back to pick Liam up from school, and they got us out of there about 30 seconds before our deadline.

I know a lot of people are just plain philosophically opposed to minivans, but I have to say that so far, this one is great. It's fun to drive, and we all have plenty of room (we can even accommodate other passengers now!). The safety features are tops, and the boys will be the first to tell you how much they absolutely love having a DVD player in the back (which will come in very handy if we take that long road trip this summer). Overall, I'd say we're really happy with our choice ... at least until we have to start making car payments again.