our new ride

I am officially part of the minivan moms club. I never thought I would be. minivans are not cool... but if cool moms drive them does it make them more so? I hope so because I love my new van. It is so nice! and dare I say... cool?
I have been wanting a new car for a LONG time now, but I tried to be patient and practical so I waited until we needed one. Now we do, in 2 days we will be having an exchange student come from japan(more on that later) and all of us could not fit into our one car. (side note) yes we have been a one car family since we've been married. it really has not been very bad, with dan working from home we rarely ever need two cars. like once a month it would be nice if we had it but we always make it work.
Also I am more often picking up parkers friends and taking them places and before we could not fit them. and if we ever had another kid we would need it too. so today was our day!
We have been researching like crazy. we came down to two choices the Honda Odyssey or the Toyota Sienna. I have heard nothing, but great things about both of them. so it would just be down to whatever we found that we liked the best. We have been looking to buy either. A few days ago I found the prefect odyssey that was a great price so good in fact that 3 buyers were all rushing to the dealership to see who could buy it first. we did not win. :( I was crushed. I set out on a more intense search and looked outside our town a bit. I found one in Mountain home about 45 miles away. Because it was an hour each direction I wanted lots of details over the phone. Including the final price. it was listed quite a bit higher than the one I lost and it was very similar. they said we can come VERY close to that price with in a thousand or 2. Great we were set. we came down fell in love, but of course the man who promised us the world over the phone was not there today...:( the manager on duty was not budging. his counter offers were by the smallest ridiculous amount possible. after painstaking negotiations and almost walking out a few times we came to a price we both agreed upon. still a bit more than we thought we were going to spend but it is still a screaming deal. $10k lower than bluebook. the car is in perfect condition and is totally decked out. My favorite feature is that with my remote I can open the doors and lift the gate and roll down the windows. how cool is that!!! It has so many fancy features I am sure we will never use and probably won't even know how, but it is perfect. It is a 2008 odyssey Touring with 22,ooo miles. One of our debates was to buy new with in our price range with a more basic model or get a slightly used low mileage still under warranty that was decked out for the same price so we choose the later. except we got it for even less. It was a win win win situation!!!
So If you can not tell I am pretty excited. it will be great for long trips to California and not so great when at Costco I can not figure which Honda van is mine. Oh well I can live that. Happy driving!!