Father's Day 2009

Josh and the kids next to Grace and Hannah's tree after church on Father's Day

(Day 171 of 365)

After lunch we went to my grandparents' house for the afternoon and for a quick supper before we drove to another town to see about buying a new car.

6 or 7 years ago, when we still owned our light blue Plymouth Voyager, we bought a 1988 (yes, '88) silver Dodge Caravan as a second vehicle. This was when we still lived in town and farther from where Josh worked. Although Josh biked to work most of the year, he couldn't once there was snow on the roads. E would be starting preschool, and I'd have to take her since there was no bussing for preschoolers. Therefore, we needed another vehicle and bought what has affectionately become known as "Daddy's stinky silver van". :) Now that we live practically next door to where Josh works, he walks to work, and we only use the silver van to take garbage and recycling to the transfer station, and on the rare occasion when we both need a vehicle at the same time.

The driver's side door doesn't shut all the way due to a gust of wind blowing the door open once and hyper-extending it. We keep it shut by hooking tie-down straps to the inside of the driver's and passenger doors and ratcheting them tight. The odometer, spedometer, and gas gauge are no longer accurate. I like to say the van has a Napoleon complex because it's small compared to our big blue van, and when you stop it while it's running, the engine revs up (if it doesn't just die and you have to restart it). It's got a bit of rust, too. We don't bother locking the doors on it because who'd steal it? The van definitely has character!

We also have our big, full-size 1998 Chevy Express which is what we usually drive. We bought it 3 yrs ago when I was pregnant with S and we wouldn't have been able to fit our whole family into the Voyager because of all the car seats. We really like it, but it only gets about 10-12 miles per gallon. It seems so wasteful to drive it places when we aren't all going along. Now that I drive to work 5 dys/wk, it made sense to look for something that got better gas mileage (and wasn't falling apart!).

Josh mentioned this to his co-workers one day, and one of them said his niece and her husband were planning to sell one of their cars, so he put Josh in touch with them. They are who we went to see yesterday.

The car they were selling is a black 1998 Toyota Camry with over 200,000 miles on it, but it was very well taken care of and runs great. Josh and I both test drove it and were impressed. The door handle on the driver's side is broken off, but you can still open the door from the outside. There are a few scratches on the car,and some nicks on the hood from stones, but all in all, it's in pretty good shape. The owner was going to get the door handle fixed and have the car re-detailed, but he hadn't gotten around to it yet. Since he didn't get the car fixed up, he offered to take $1000 less than what he'd originally asked. This was the price range in which we'd been looking, so we paid him then and there, and I drove it home with E and F riding in the back seat.

Unfortunately the previous owner couldn't find the title right away, so he was going to look for it a little more, and, if he can't find it, he's going to get a duplicate title at his expense.

The car's biggest highlight for the kids (and me!) is the car's sun and moon roof!

(Day 172 of 365)