Monday, April 23, 2012

Here she is folks

The newest member of our family...



for now I think we will call her Sienna. We have another girl we need to name.

Our Vibe (who I do miss) was white. I was not a fan of having a white car. When we knew we would need to purchase a van I said "any color but white". Oh famous last words! Our rental SUV was white & the van we bought was white. Ugh. Maybe we will be better about washing the Sienna then we were the Vibe?!

Of course there were other vans out there. If color was truly the most important criteria to me we would not have gotten this one. But there are so many factors: year, mileage, number of seats, wear & tear, warranty, features, brand. oh and price!

The van does not fit in our little Seattle driveway without blocking a significant portion of the curb. So she gets parked on the street. This makes me a little nervous because vans are a bit wide & what if someone was not being careful & smashed into her? So I try to always tuck in the driver side mirror (I can't park with the drivers side against the curb because I got ticketed for that on our street a few months back!). And I am very grateful for sliding doors that make door-dings less possible in the parking spaces that (even if not labeled compact) feel a little too compact for a van. Too bad my stomach is not compact. I will need to allow even more space on the driver side as this baby bump on mine continues to grow!

The good news about the van not fitting in our driveway is that now we are in no hurry to buy a new garage door. Our garage door is quite old & swings out. So when the Vibe was parked in the driveway we could not open the garage door to get strollers/bikes/etc out. So I had to plan ahead & park on the street, or move the car when I knew we needed bike access. Now I guess i could have just always parked on the street, but parking in the driveway felt more protected & safer.

So we miss the Vibe but are happily adjusting to the perks of owning a "swagger wagon"!

1 comment:

  1. Congrats on the new van! looks nice. Great beach pics of the girls. See you soon:-) MOM

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