The Seidel Family: Minivan

Thursday, November 16, 2017

We bought a minivan!

We knew that if we ever had 4 kids, we would want to upgrade my vehicle for more room. When we bought my traverse 3 months before Atticus was born, we planned so carefully. We got three rows and bucket seats in the second row, so kids could easily go back and forth. It had storage room in the back and the 3rd row could fold down in sections. We went super plain jane with dark interior to keep it looking cleaner. And, really, it was a great vehicle! But, I will never forget getting so frustrated with it for about 3 months after Everly was born. Atticus was back and forth on being able to buckle and unbuckle his 5 point harness seat belt. And, he was in the third row. And, it was SO hard to crawl into the third row with carseats in the second row just to get to him each and every time. Eventually, he got it and was good to go, but boy was it frustrating. Sometimes, I would even open the tailgate to reach over the backseat to buckle or unbuckle him. All of this is ok when you are in your garage, but in the middle of summer in a Target parking lot or somewhere else, it was just frustrating.

So, back then, I started thinking about minivans. Vic and I were never the "we will never drive a minivan because they are not cool" people, but we really thought that we liked other SUV's better and would just always go that route. Vic always thought a Tahoe would be our next vehicle and for awhile I agreed. We have a goal to keep our vehicles for 8 years minimum and that would mean we would not get a new one for me until January 2019 or when we had baby #4.

Well, early November, my tire pressure on one tire was low one day so I aired up and went about my business. About a week later, it was low again on the same tire, so I took it in to Discount Tire to see if there was a leak, and they told me I needed new tires at least on the front, but maybe all the way around. I am not good to look at those things, but also, my tires should still have been in good shape (40,000 mile tires or something close to that). They told me they were thinning because they needed realignment. So, they suggested I get them realigned first and then come in for new tires. So, off I went to the place to get that done. They called me later that day and said that actually, they could not realign them until they fixed all of these maintenance things (new struts, new shocks, some power steering parts) because they were all leaking or getting old. And, it was to the tune of $3500 plus we still had to buy new tires. To be honest, the guy we worked with was super nice. He said that we wouldn't notice any of these things by just driving the vehicle, but they needed to be fixed. When he called me, he actually suggested that we trade this vehicle in before he even told me the price of repairs because he said it was in great shape, but just needed these things fixed. The worst part was that when they looked at the inside of one of the tires, it was almost completely split! Again - we wouldn't have seen it, but Vic and I are just not good vehicle people to know when things might need to be checked on. We can only be good at so much! ha!

Right away, we thought that we didn't really want to drop $4000+ on a vehicle that we really wanted to trade in if we had a 4th baby, which we hoped would be in the next year. So, we decided to go vehicle shopping very quickly. GG had been in town and offered to stay an extra couple of days for us to do this without kids. Vic and Atticus and I went that night to look at a minivan and an Expedition. Vic had recently been thinking an expedition might be a good next option (because Tahoe's are so expensive). But, I really really really wanted to look at minivans. So, we did both. We looked at a minivan and then an expedition and Vic immediately realized that a minivan was the perfect vehicle for 4 carseats. That is really what it went down to. The minivan was roomy and comfortable; it had a removable center seat in the 2nd row (so it could be bucket seats or a full bench); the 2nd row seats moved sideways when that extra one was out (making it so much easier to reach the kids in the 3rd row), plus it had even more storage space in the back behind the 3rd row. It was just more kid-carseat-friendly. So, after 24 hours, we had a new minivan! It fits Vic well and has all kinds of new technology that Vic loves. We went with an upgrade to the leather interior at the last minute and while I'm glad we did, I wish we would have just kept going up one more level to include the DVD player! But, that's ok - we really like our new ride! We hope it lasts through all kids being in carseats! We asked Atticus if he would want to drive this one day when he was 16, as his first car. He thought that sounded great! Too bad that he probably will have changed his mind on it being "so cool" by the time he is 16!