Finally, more leg room!

You may remember this photo from the day we returned home from the hospital with our new baby Hannah way back in March. It was tight, but we managed to get all three kids in their bulky car seats to fit into the backseat of our Buick Century. Hannah has grown quite a bit since then and it has become increasingly difficult to lift her in and out of the middle of that back seat. Can you believe we drove from Texas to Pennsylvania and back like this? Yes, that's 2 VERY full days of reaching over the passenger seat to distribute snacks, books, games and whatnot that were inconveniently lodged in the floorboard of the backseat. Thankfully, our kids love car trips which made the drive very pleasant aside from the backbreaking work of being in the front passenger seat in taciturn.

Well, I am very happy to announce that we are now the proud owners of a minivan! John had been watching Craig's List for minivans in our price range and he found a GREAT deal on a 2004 Kia Sedona that we just couldn't pass up. John will now drive the Buick and we will hopefully be able to sell the Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight (or as our associate pastor, Patrick Poteet calls it, the "big shot pastor car")! As much as John was teased about driving around in the "land yacht" (as Paul Tripp has referred to it), we were very thankful to inherit the Oldsmobile from John's grandmother back when I totaled my Nissan in 2003. And when John's Camry died, we were very thankful to receive the Buick from my mom back in December of 2006. While we were grateful to have those provisions right when we needed them, John has been very eager to downsize while I have been very eager to upsize (see below)! Now, thanks to a very generous and unexpected gift from John's great aunt, we were able to pay for the van without financing it. So we've gone from NO car payments to NO car payments - yahoo!

I decided to put Christopher in the backseat and keep Sarah and Hannah together in the middle seat. Sarah is very helpful with Hannah (i.e. giving her toys, sippy cups and making her laugh) and it's just easier for her to get in and out of the middle seat than it would be in the back.

We took the van for a drive last night and asked Christopher how he liked having the big backseat all to himself. He responded, "Well, I don't like being all by myself." We were a little worried about that, but have since talked up the cool factor in getting to sit all the way in the back. I will say that he does seem pretty far away compared to being directly behind the driver's seat for pretty much all of his life up until now. Every time we've gotten in the van now, Sarah has said, "Christopher - you're so far away!"

So the van has so far been a hit with everyone in our family. The kids were SO excited to climb around inside it the day we brought it home and I have been so pleased driving it. John and I are thrilled to have a 'new' van without any car payments and we are both looking forward to driving it to Pennsylvania this year.