Our First Minivan

Greg said, "I will never drive a minivan. Never." Ha! Now we have two! Here's the story of how we acquired our first van...

When we found out we were having triplets, we had a Toyota Camry and a 2-door Chevy Blazer. Neither of these cars can hold 4 car seats and two adults. So we sold the Blazer before we moved and began looking for a bigger car. We checked out the big Suburbans and Explorers, but it would have been too hard to get car seats and babies into the back row. We checked out conversion vans - horrible gas mileage and too expensive. We checked out some minivans and decided to look for a good used one with low mileage. We settled on a few models that had a longer wheel base so we would have room for a stroller in the back. While still living several states away, we found one on Autotrader.com close to where we were moving to that was a 2002 model with only 28,000 miles and had leather seats, and was thousands less than everything else we saw with low miles. But then we got busy with our move and put it off for a while.

We moved, I was on and off bedrest... finally in November when I was able to get out some, we started looking again and this 2002 van was still for sale, but now it was only a 30 minute drive from where we lived! So we sent an email and an older gentleman called me back. Could we meet them at his house to look at the van? He had just had hip-replacement surgery and it was hard to get out. He gave me their address; they lived in an exlusive gated neighborhood in the hills that overlooked the city. Hmmm... So a few days later we drove to their house to check out the van. Very nice neighborhood - with houses like I have only seen on TV! They had only used the van to drive to their home in Breckenridge, CO and back - which is why it only had 28,000 miles and was almost 5 years old. It was in great shape and had been well maintained. I drove it around the block and then Greg had a turn. The couple that was selling the van was so nice, and quite taken with Meredith - who was about 19 months old at the time. We made them an offer $1000 below their asking price (which was already reasonable, but we figured we'd try), and the man said why don't we take off $500 more because I think the van needs new tires. So we wrote him a personal check from our out of state bank with our out of state address on it. They offered Meredith a fully clothed Build-a-Bear teddy bear to take home and we drove off with our new van!

That night or the next day, I can't remember now, I got an email from this gentleman and he and his wife wanted to buy us carseats for the triplets. Can you believe it? He included a link to one that he and his wife had found online after doing some research, and thought these would be a good quality and safe. Two days later, we came home to find three boxes of car seats sitting on the front porch. What amazing generosity!

Now here are the things that make this story so funny... We drove Greg's parents car to their house to check out the van since it had Meredith's car seat in it. It is a Ford Focus that is a few years old, and has some slight hail damage. Meredith was wearing a shirt and pants badly stained with watermelon juice from that night's dinner and her hair had not been combed or fixed after her nap (I just didn't think about it!). While we were at their house, Meredith's diaper leaked and got her pants wet; I had no change of clothes for her. So she got a new diaper and then had to run around in just her shirt and diaper at their house (poor baby!). So these people probably thought we were quite a mess and needed all the help we could get!

But seriously, their offer was so generous - and the girls have been using the carseats since they were about 9 months old. They were rear-facing in them, are now forward-facing, and the seats will also convert to a high-back booster seat for them in a few years. So these really are the only carseats the triplets should ever need. And the carseats this couple picked out are narrow enough to all three fit across the back seat of the van. Almost all the other ones I had looked at would have been too big.

And the tires on the car - we just replaced them a few months ago. Two years after we bought the van.

Meredith sits in the 2nd row and Amanda, Claire and Melissa sit in the 3rd row. We keep the other seat in the second row folded down so that it's easy to get everyone in and out.