A Tribute to Our Minivan

We finally sold our mini-van this morning!  And I feel like that deserves a proper goodbye. 

We bought that mini-van in January of 2007, just a few months after Bentley was born.  We hadn't planned to go full-on mini-van so quickly, but Craig's car died and we were stuck with one car.  The housing market was booming impossibly (literally, since it began crashing just a year later), so the cash we'd saved up for a down payment wasn't going to help us be able to afford a home, so we decided to use it on a car instead.  Car salesmen kept trying to get me to buy a sedan, but I was adamant that I wanted a mini-van.  I knew that I wanted more kids, and the jump to a bigger car seemed inevitable, so I didn't see the point in stalling with a smaller car that would only work for a few more years.

We found a used car and convinced the dealer to let us test drive it.  We told him all we could pay was $10K (he was asking $12.5k) and he took our offer.  We filled out all the paperwork, wrote him a check, and drove home with our new mini-van.  At that point, it was the biggest purchase either Craig or I had EVER made and we were terrified.  We were so scared that it would break down on us and cost more to fix than it would ever be worth.

A little over a year later, we had Kendra and I knew a mini-van had been a good idea...  We were filling it up quickly!

Bentley, at age 2-- still so little!

There's our funny little Kendra!

And it did break down a few months later.  I was at Costco and it wouldn't start.  Fortunately, Costco was about a ten-minute walk from our apartment, so it was easy to get home.  The next day we had someone look at it and the batter was dead.  We replaced the battery.

And that was the last time it ever died on me.  Not that we haven't done any repairs since then...  Craig is great about making sure we get the oil changed.  I insisted on new tires every now and then.  And pretty much any other work we've had done on it was simply so it would pass state safety and emissions inspections.  I think the biggest problem it ever had besides the emissions test was the time a mouse started living in it (that was just plain gross)...

In the ten years we have owned it, that car has been INCREDIBLY reliable.  I wish Toyota made a huge van like the one we just bought, because I am a totally loyal Toyota customer now. 

This must have been after a ward campout

Anyway, a car like that, even with 160,000 miles on it and being fifteen years old, we figured it was still worth a few bucks, so we refused the dealer trade-in of only a thousand dollars.  We were sure we could do better with Craig's List (and the dealers told us we could, too, so this wasn't just chutzpah on our part).  We listed it way too high and didn't get any takers.  Then the battery died (for the second time in ten years) so we let it sit in the garage for several weeks until we could get around to replacing it (no sense in trying to get someone to test drive a car that won't start!).  Finally we got a new battery and lowered the price.  A week later a nice guy texted asking if he could come see it.  He and his wife drove it with Craig and we managed to agree on a price.  Done!

We took it to them this morning and they gave us cash.  We signed away the title.  We were just about to drive away when they came running out of their home to stop us.  As Craig rolled down the window they asked, "Does it have a name?"

We looked at each other.  "Not really...  We always just called it The Van."  (See previous posts about my family's awesome ability to give things THE most boring names ever!)  Finally I said, "If you come up with an awesome name, please let us know!"

We drove away, waving to the car as we passed it.

Honestly, I can't believe what a great car it was for so many years.  We've taken it on so many trips-- camping and up to New York and Pennsylvania and Kentucky...  Down to South Carolina and to the beach...  I'm pretty sure we even drove it to Houston...  Not to mention all the day-to-day stuff I've relied on it for...  I hope it will be continue to be as reliable for its new owners.  How lucky were we to have found it when we did?  Who would have guessed we could outgrow it so quickly?