Okay Mom -- this is for you!
My mom keeps telling me she checks my blog often only to find I haven't posted anything new. Well this news is not new to her but a post of news of our family anyway....
So in May and early June we were preparing for a 6,000 mile road trip out West and contemplating whether or not to rent a car for the trip or take our own van. The rental would cost almost $1,000 and without upgrading to a full-size SUV (for $2,200 for a month) the rental company wouldn't guarantee us a vehicle that would seat our family of 7. The didn't have any mini-vans available at the time. This all goes back to the summer of 2003 when we drove our old van from Omaha, Nebraska to Sacramento, CA for our summer trip only to have our transmission die right when we got off the freeway at our home exit, Bond Road. I didn't want to spent the $3,000+ to fix the older van we'd had continuous problems with. Mike wasn't ready to stray from our plan to wait 6-9 more months to buy a new van. The dealership where the van had been towed offered us $3,000 toward a trade-in which I wanted to do but Mike wasn't willing to change our time line for a new vehicle. We really don't fight -- we disagree sometimes -- but this was by far the biggest "disagreement" of our 7 years of marriage at that time. To top it off we were leaving in a few days for a trip to Hawaii, leaving our kids with Mike's mom for a week to have a romantic vacation alone. So we paid the $3,000 to have the old van fixed then only kept it for 6 more months before we gave up trying to continue repairing the old van and traded it in for Mike's Altima where we got how much for a trade-in???? Just $3,000!!! It had been a lemon of a van in my opinion which is another reason our next vehicles have all been brand new. Mike promised me back then that we would never drive an old van on a long trip. It wasn't worth the stress of wondering if it would die -- of course at that time we didn't have to rent a large vehicle as we only had 3 kids are weren't planning to have any more. Mason was 8 months old at the time.
So in preparation for an even longer trip with our family of 7 we decided what are cars for -- we pay for them to drive them where we want to go. So we agreed to take our van in to a repair shop to have it checked out and made ready for such a long trip. We agreed we wouldn't spend any more than $500 on repairs for a vehicle with 101,000 miles that we were only planning to keep till the end of the year. The owner of the shop called us himself and said he definitely would NOT take this van on a long trip. The rack & pinion on the front right side was worn and could fail at any time causing us to lose steering in the right front wheel. That was the only major repair but others were needed soon. This NEEDED repair would cost us over $1200 and we were planning to leave town the next afternoon. After talking with Mike we decided we would move up our plans to buy a new van. I spent that afternoon looking on the internet for dealerships in the area who had the model and color I wanted and also talked with a neighbor who had bought the same exact van just 10 days before. So what did we do? We drove the silver van three of my kids had ever only known from the repair shop straight to a Honda dealership and bought the white Honda Odyssey I had wanted when we bought this Chrysler van almost 7 years ago. We didn't even see it or drive it before we filled out all the paperwork. The research our neighbor had done before buying their Odyssey was invaluable as we had just one evening to buy this new van and pack it up to drive out to the west coast and back with stops in Colorado, Utah, California & Nebraska.
It's a bit crazy to be so excited about a new MINIVAN but I've recommended the van to numerous friends over the years who have known of my obsession with cars and asked for my opinion about which van to buy. I finally got my own!!! Thank you to Mike for giving me this luxury. It's an EX-L model with leather, sunroof, DVD player with wireless headsets, 8 seats and a power liftgate. The middle windows roll down (my kids were constantly asking me to do this in our old van that didn't have the ability to do so) and I even have XM radio for a few months. We've had it for 8 weeks today and have over 7200 miles already but they've been fun to drive, even when I had to drive all the way home from Sacramento by myself with all five kids! Mike had flown home from there to return to work.
We have a few friends and family members who name their cars so we thought it would be fun to do as well. After unsuccessfully trying a few other names we agreed to name her "Taffy". The official name of the van color is "taffeta white" which is where the name came from.
Okay, Mom -- there's your post. When I have a bit more time I'll share all about Hawaii, summer fun with cousins and our road trip of 2009. Stay tuned....
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Taffy
Okay Mom -- this is for you!
My mom keeps telling me she checks my blog often only to find I haven't posted anything new. Well this news is not new to her but a post of news of our family anyway....
So in May and early June we were preparing for a 6,000 mile road trip out West and contemplating whether or not to rent a car for the trip or take our own van. The rental would cost almost $1,000 and without upgrading to a full-size SUV (for $2,200 for a month) the rental company wouldn't guarantee us a vehicle that would seat our family of 7. The didn't have any mini-vans available at the time. This all goes back to the summer of 2003 when we drove our old van from Omaha, Nebraska to Sacramento, CA for our summer trip only to have our transmission die right when we got off the freeway at our home exit, Bond Road. I didn't want to spent the $3,000+ to fix the older van we'd had continuous problems with. Mike wasn't ready to stray from our plan to wait 6-9 more months to buy a new van. The dealership where the van had been towed offered us $3,000 toward a trade-in which I wanted to do but Mike wasn't willing to change our time line for a new vehicle. We really don't fight -- we disagree sometimes -- but this was by far the biggest "disagreement" of our 7 years of marriage at that time. To top it off we were leaving in a few days for a trip to Hawaii, leaving our kids with Mike's mom for a week to have a romantic vacation alone. So we paid the $3,000 to have the old van fixed then only kept it for 6 more months before we gave up trying to continue repairing the old van and traded it in for Mike's Altima where we got how much for a trade-in???? Just $3,000!!! It had been a lemon of a van in my opinion which is another reason our next vehicles have all been brand new. Mike promised me back then that we would never drive an old van on a long trip. It wasn't worth the stress of wondering if it would die -- of course at that time we didn't have to rent a large vehicle as we only had 3 kids are weren't planning to have any more. Mason was 8 months old at the time.
So in preparation for an even longer trip with our family of 7 we decided what are cars for -- we pay for them to drive them where we want to go. So we agreed to take our van in to a repair shop to have it checked out and made ready for such a long trip. We agreed we wouldn't spend any more than $500 on repairs for a vehicle with 101,000 miles that we were only planning to keep till the end of the year. The owner of the shop called us himself and said he definitely would NOT take this van on a long trip. The rack & pinion on the front right side was worn and could fail at any time causing us to lose steering in the right front wheel. That was the only major repair but others were needed soon. This NEEDED repair would cost us over $1200 and we were planning to leave town the next afternoon. After talking with Mike we decided we would move up our plans to buy a new van. I spent that afternoon looking on the internet for dealerships in the area who had the model and color I wanted and also talked with a neighbor who had bought the same exact van just 10 days before. So what did we do? We drove the silver van three of my kids had ever only known from the repair shop straight to a Honda dealership and bought the white Honda Odyssey I had wanted when we bought this Chrysler van almost 7 years ago. We didn't even see it or drive it before we filled out all the paperwork. The research our neighbor had done before buying their Odyssey was invaluable as we had just one evening to buy this new van and pack it up to drive out to the west coast and back with stops in Colorado, Utah, California & Nebraska.
It's a bit crazy to be so excited about a new MINIVAN but I've recommended the van to numerous friends over the years who have known of my obsession with cars and asked for my opinion about which van to buy. I finally got my own!!! Thank you to Mike for giving me this luxury. It's an EX-L model with leather, sunroof, DVD player with wireless headsets, 8 seats and a power liftgate. The middle windows roll down (my kids were constantly asking me to do this in our old van that didn't have the ability to do so) and I even have XM radio for a few months. We've had it for 8 weeks today and have over 7200 miles already but they've been fun to drive, even when I had to drive all the way home from Sacramento by myself with all five kids! Mike had flown home from there to return to work.
We have a few friends and family members who name their cars so we thought it would be fun to do as well. After unsuccessfully trying a few other names we agreed to name her "Taffy". The official name of the van color is "taffeta white" which is where the name came from.
Okay, Mom -- there's your post. When I have a bit more time I'll share all about Hawaii, summer fun with cousins and our road trip of 2009. Stay tuned....
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2 comments:
Mercy, your comment made my day :). Thanks for stopping by!
And the car is such fun news! Noah and I borrowed a ward member's car to make a Costco run for church this week - I have forgotten what a liberating feeling it is to DRIVE!
Mercy SOOOO glad you got your dream car!!!! :) Thanks for recommending it to us we love ours...but not enough to name it lol! You are so cute can't wait to check in again and hear about Hawaii!! This is Mia not Bruce!
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