I love my van

I am a minivan driving Momma. I didn't want to be one and I must admit I fought it and danced around it for years. But now that I succumbed to the inevitable, I have to say it.

I. Love. My. Van.

I do, I really really do!

I have always been a big fan of the automobile. Even when I was little, I had only a passing interest in dolls and barbies. My real passion was matchbox cars.

As a toddler I would place a towel on my head, hang my rosary around my neck and play with my small vehicles (I guess I should mention here that I am Catholic - just in case you didn't understand what was going on there). My parents called me Sister Mary Karen the auto mechanic.

I loved the way those little cars looked & spent hours upon hours driving them through the small town my parents had built for me as a Christmas present one year.

My Mom & sister think I am a car savant. Show me the front end or tail light of a car even from a distance & I can usually name the make & model of the car in question (I am not good on the year it was made though - I'm not a total geek. OK yes I am, I just don't have a head for numbers).

My passion for the automobile only grew as I got older and was finally able to drive one myself. I had the usual hand-me down cars that are standard fare for most teenage drivers, but I loved them all. Even the Tank - the late model 1970's silver-grey Buick Century that my sister & I drove in high school.

The first new car I ever owned was a 2 door Nissan Sentra (& by owned I mean that my very kind parents bought me a car when I graduated from college. They purchased the car once I promised them that I was not going to grad school, but would instead find a job & make myself a useful member of society) . I loved that car, it was shiny bright red & had a sun roof. I would delight in driving through town singing my favorite songs off-key with my hair blowing in the wind. My husband would probably also like me to add that I abused the interior of this car horribly. He is right. For some reason the rear floor boards of my car were always buried under piles of loose pills of Advil, tampons & mismatched earrings. Mr. Crackers was rightly horrified the first time I gave him a ride somewhere & he happened to glance back into the rear seat of my vehicle. I am happy to say he was able to look beyond the mess of feminine products & date me anyway.

After a couple years of marriage during which Mr. Crackers tolerated the tampon-mobile, I had a particularly successful year at work and was awarded my first bonus. I took that bonus & put a down payment on a new (well, it was new to me anyway) vehicle. It was a black Nissan Pathfinder. It had a roofrack that was handy for toting around our canoe & a large rear storage area that was handy for toting around our 2 dogs.

It served us well ... until it died very unexpectedly (& prematurely) in the mountains of Tennessee when I was 7 months pregnant with C.

So...after much deliberation we found this car (sigh):

Isn't it awesome? It was 3 or 4 years old when we bought it, but it was a terrific buy. Seriously, how can you not love that car?

Here I am showing off my new vehicle with baby C still cooking in the oven.

We owned it for 6 years. Just like the velveteen rabbit, our station wagon began showing signs of wear (some of that wear came in the form of a very large dent in the hood courtesy of Mr. Crackers) that gave it some real character. I loved it. Since there weren't many people driving around in a white Volvo station wagon where I lived, I would get reports of people telling me that they had seen me at Target, or driving down toward the mall.

Sadly, I just couldn't fit 4 kids into my car (of course, in the days before car seats, I could've probably squeezed eight or 10 kids in the back). So, this summer we began the process of finding a new one. Mr. Crackers breaks out in hives at the thought of car shopping with me. I was instructed to narrow it down to 1 favorite & then he'd gladly take a look at it. Since my Dad is a car nut like me, we set off to find a family car that could accommodate my 2 hooligans as well as the 2 other kids that are in the carpool I drive to the parochial school over in the next town.

I didn't want a van at all. I wanted something cooler, something that didn't scream "I have a lot of kids to transport, so I really don't care what my car looks like". My Dad was very patient with me, but in the end, I found that they don't make convertibles that seat up to 8 people comfortably. I conferred with my Mom who pointed out (ever so delicately) "This car isn't for you, it's for the kids. Suck it up." So, I gave up the fight & got a mini-van. I am going to admit it here....I love it. The room, the automatic sliding doors, the 15 cupholders, the storage space...My God The Storage Space! I can cart an incredible amount of crap around in my new van & still have room to drive all of those hooligans around town in comfort.

I've said it once & I'll say it again. I Love My Van!

(Coolness be damned. What the hell - I'm a big dork anyway. What was I going to do with a cool car.)