I hope all of you had a wonderful long weekend with your families!

We just got home from buying our new (to us!) van. Our current van has been faithful for years but is reaching the point that it feels like everything is starting to break down. If it was just small stuff, we would get it fixed, but when we saw the transmission starting to go, we didn’t feel it was worth it to fix the smaller things. It’s not gone yet, but backing up is a problem – I’ve learned to become aware of the slightest hills when parking, so that I can line up our van to take advantage of it and roll backwards downhill when I’m ready to go!

So I’ve been keeping my eyes open for used passenger vans that have the features that I want for the last few weeks (I didn’t want to wait until we were literally stuck with a van that wouldn’t go!), and spoke to someone yesterday who had what seemed like a good option. We went to see one van this morning, but the owner didn’t show! Fortunately, the van was there and we could determine by looking at it that it wasn’t for us, and the good part about him not being there was I didn’t need to tell him that I didn’t like it. A couple of hours later, we drove out to meet the person we bought this van from, and pretty quickly the money and paperwork changed hands. I told the kids what a good thing it was that so many things were going wrong with our old van, since now they appreciate all of the things that work in this one! (Things like an unbroken mirror, a driver’s door that opens and closes well…)

They especially love that this has a cassette player. We installed a cd player in our van, but we have lots of story and music cassettes that we can usually only listen to at home. They brought some cassettes with us when we went to go look at the van, in case we bought it, and it was so nice to have music that I don’t often get to listen to, but really enjoy while I was driving. They were also pleased that the seller gave them a basketball that was in the van – we recently got a basketball hoop for the backyard, but haven’t yet gotten a basketball. So they rushed out to try it out as soon as we got home. 🙂

We still need to install a third bench seat (it currently seats 8), but for right now, it’s fine since dh doesn’t usually go places with us. And by the time our yearly camping trip rolls around in a few weeks, I hope to have the additional seating in.

Avivah