For a month or so we have been shopping... for:
That's right. I am an old mom. I want the convenience of push-button door openers, and heated leather. I want a DVD player that will entertain my sweet children, and keep them from yelling at me all the time. I want to have more babies, and by the time we have the next one we will need a bigger vehicle anyway. I am an activity days advisor, (I am working on going more often... at least.) so it will be helpful to have a bigger car for that as well. Also I babysit on occasion for friends, and my sweet Koop and Liv.... maybe even Gab soon. But I needed something big enough to house all of my precious little people.
We have had a hard time finding the right deal, and it's been tough deciding to trade or sell our Element to be able to buy said minivan.
Until Now...
This is us saying goodbye to our beloved Element. We traded up. :) But I won't lie, I had tears come to my eyes seeing her go...
The Element has served us well, and brought home both of my babies from the hospital. We've owned it since June of '06. In fact I signed papers and picked it up the day Coleman left for basic training. I drove it all by myself all summer long... when he got off the plane and came out of the airport he drove it for the first time (well as an owner... he did test-drive it.) That was weird, to him it was a new car, and to me it was old news.
I remember him taking me to drive it before we bought it, (It was a Repo at our credit union) and thinking, "seriously? that ugly, boxy thing?" ... but a few minutes in it, and I loved it. It was a 2003, it had (roughly) 40,000 miles on it... It was big and open, and comfortable for us, and suited me so well. I loved the Orange... I loved that it was plastic. (considering how much i like to rear-end stuff, or bump into things...) I loved that it had neoprene seats, and plastic that cleaned up so well...I loved that it was All wheel drive, and the EX trim. I loved that it had a sunroof in the back, and the glass could come out completely, (I think that summer I had the glass in for about a day)...etc.
I road-tripped in it to California w/my grandma that summer (and met my mom, who was travel nursing in Arizona) and went to sit in the studio audience of Dr. Phil. We had a great couple of days on the beach then back home. I actually was rear-ended in it down there... I got out screamed, made sure the hatch still opened, and left. I was not about to wait for 3 hours for a cop to come write a police report, even though no damage, (Seriously, NO damage) was done. I did, however, find Diet Coke cans (empty and full) all over that car when we got home. Thanks grandma. :)
Coleman got home from basic, and we had Cash 10 months later. :). When I was Pregnant with him (like 2 months before he was born) I was driving to pick up Coleman from work, and I pulled into a parking lot that had a cable running from one fence post to the other... I didn't see the cable, totally ran into it, and the cable ran under the hood, but on top of the passenger side fender; destroying the fender. I cried and cried and cried. It was a sad day. (This was finally fixed in 2011! But I don't think I took a pic, darn it... Ha.)
We drove Cash home in this car. My Dad (who works at autoliv (airbags and seatbelts) is kind of a seatbelt police-man) helped me to hook up the base of Cash's car seat in the middle of the back seats. It was nice to have such an open car to get his big bulky car seat in and out of. I remember driving home one time (from my mom's, exactly 3 miles from my house at that time) and Cash cried and cried the whole way home. Screamed more like. Until I finally cried. Like felt horrible, worst mom in the world, my baby was suffering because of me, cry. I was a first time mom. What more can I say?
This car and I were great friends the next couple of years:
(It's a stretch... but the nose of the car is in the pic, right? :)
The kid could NOT figure out what happened to his sucker. Love him:
When we had Presley, same thing, it was nice to have a bigger car to load the kids in and out of. In fact, when my water broke (with Pres) I was at home in my bathroom, Coleman had just gotten a call to go on a fire.... I grabbed Cash, loaded him up, and stuck a hand towel between my legs... stuck another towel on the seat, and drove in the Element to good old EIRMC. It was quite an exciting day, :) -- poor car.
It was very open, which was nice when we had both kids to load up, I would open my door, then the back door, load her in, then buckle up Cash. When I started school in the end of August '09 I started driving our civic more to save gas money... Coleman drove the Element more often...
At the end of the first semester of nursing school (July '10) we went camping at Bear Lake with Coleman's family, (which I was amazed by the amazingness of its ability to drive in the sand down to the water... If you couldn't tell It was truly amazing.) Then camping with my family at Granite in Wyoming. We drove this bad boy, and towed our cute little ghetto tent trailer. It was on this camp trip that we got a ticket for leaving our cooler out in bear country. Apparently this is a serious offense, as it was a $250 ticket. (While negotiating and paying this ticket, some of the officers we talked to on the phone couldn't believe anyone had written a ticket for this, let alone for that much money. One of them followed up with "well, I guess it's anything from $50-$5000. Depending on how compliant you are being." --- We had been camping for less than 24 hours at this point, no warning. Nothing.) Oh well. Live and learn. Probably won't go back there again... Because if we did we wouldn't have the trusty Element to leave the cooler in this time...
(P.S. If a bear came, I would probably throw my cooler out to give myself enough time to grab my kids and get outta dodge anyway. Just sayin')
(You can see the suicide doors in this photo.... The boys were getting ready to go river rafting with my family, during our reunion... Snake river... Cash rode to 'the cable')
This is us going to Cash's first day of preschool... We (of course) drove the Element:
When I totalled our civic in November of 2010 (The 2nd semester of nursing school):
(BAD Day!) Cried a lot this day too. Scared me. (And this was our first car we bought together. I am very sentimental. Or just mental. not sure which...)
The Element was the only car we had for a minute... Luckily our insurance rented us a car for a couple weeks, and Coleman's parents borrowed us one of theirs for the last week until we got our insurance money. We bought another Civic:
in December, which was nice because it was a 4 door, not a 2-door like our blue one. It was much easier to drive kids in, plus it got better gas mileage than the Element. Coleman found a little Toyota Tacoma this last February-ish, and has since been driving that constantly. The Element found itself alone... it had no driver. It became our back-up, and occasionally we would drive it around town, but not often enough. We have been meaning to sell it for a while. But like everything else in our lives, it waited until we were done with school. :)
Presley cried last night when we got home in our van and the Element was gone... "The Element is GONE! Oh no! We left the Element!" The way she says Element is SO cute... emphasis on all of the syllables. Love the little munchkin face. I guess she missed the part where we moved our stuff into the other car, and then drove for several hours... (yeah, all the way from Bountiful Utah...) just sayin'
Coleman finally realized today what I was saying when I said I was a little sad to see the Element go. We saw one like it in town, and he was like "Oh, it is kind of sad." Ha. I am not the only pathetic weird-o in my house with emotional connections to vehicles.
But that would only open a whole new can of worms! :)
So, here we are two-day owners of a Black 2008 Honda Odyssey. It has 23,000 miles, and seriously feels so super new. I love it.
Even if it makes me an OLD FRUMPY mom.
DVD, tan leather heated seats, reverse camera, heated mirrors... there are SO many cool features about this car, I really like. Even though I am a mini-vanning mama now. Make fun of me all you want....
I am totally tinting the front 2 windows, so no one can see me driving it. :)
P.S. Did I mention how excited I am to have a car payment again? OOOHHH goody! It's been at least 3 years since we have had one... joyous.
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Funny Kid conversations lately:
Tonight:
"why did Presley poop her pants?"
"I think it was an accident because she has diarrhea. She probably thought it was a toot. But it was watery poop."
"OH, that's called a juicy toot." -Cash
Yesterday:
I don't like my mom.... I love her. - Cash
(He sang this at least 236 times on our way home last night from Utah. It was roughly the same number of times as potty stops we had to take from Dad's house to home...)
Sunday:
"Mom, next you are going to have two babies, one boy and one girl."
"Oh really, Cash? What are we going to name them?"
"...hmmm... I want to name her BabyCake."
"Ha. Done."
(BTW, this is not the first time this sweet child has told me that I will be experiencing the joy of a twin birth. SO maybe he knows something that I don't? :)
.JPG)
