I drove to Greenville a few days before Thanksgiving in one van, and drove home a few days after in another one. That was not the plan, but life generally doesn’t follow anyone’s preconceived notion of a plan, does it?
In October, we took our van to a well-recommended local shop to have the brakes inspected, as they were grinding and squeaking. We were told they were fine, but over the course of the next couple of weeks it continued to get worse and I began to seriously doubt what we had been told. So over Thanksgiving break we took it up to Greenville to have it looked at by my parent’s trusted mechanic. The verdict? The car was unsafe to drive and needed more than $900 worth of work.
At that point I was done. DONE. We’ve put thousands into the car this year to try to keep it going and every time we turned around, it needed a couple hundred dollars more for some random thing or another. The ongoing issues had Mike and me concerned about its reliability and the not too far-fetched possibility of me getting stranded somewhere with the kids.
Lest you think we were driving a lemon, the van was 17 years old and had 189,000 miles. It started its life as “Mom’s Limo Service” for my dad after his accident in 1999. It then spent several years shuttling us around for various high school activities before transitioning to “Mom & Dad Moving Company” as we moved back and forth umpteen times during the college years. It enjoyed a few quiet years before being repurposed into a perfect hauler for my dad’s mountain and road biking hobby. Finally, I took the reins and it (mostly) reliably shuttled our little family around Atlanta. There was a lot of life and memories in those 189,000 miles.
Driving a minivan is a milestone most people would rather not brag about, and driving a really old minivan didn’t exactly ante up the cool factor. But it was in great shape looks-wise* and most people were quite surprised to find out old it actually was. I wanted to hit the 200,000 mile milestone on the van – we were so close!
*It was in great shape until January 2016, when Mike ran it into the side of the garage several hours after we brought Hannah home from the hospital. Poor Mike! He felt so awful. But it’s now one of those family lore stories that will live in infamy. (And poor Mommy, who gingerly picked my way down the stairs to evaluate the damage.)
All that said to say: we bought a new car over Thanksgiving. It made a stressful week even more stressful – we literally searched across 3 states to try to find a low-mileage, on-budget, new-to-us Odyssey. We were pretty much trying to find a needle in a haystack, but we were successful! And, my Dad and I ended up having a great car-buying experience at the local Honda dealership.
The new van is a gray 2009 Honda Odyssey with all sorts of nice extras. I traded a newer body style for more interior creature comforts – the heated seats and power lift gate are two of my favorites.
It looks great, drives really well and I’m super pleased with it so far!
#momlife
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