Our new ride

With the arrival of twins coming this summer, we needed a vehicle that would hold five car seats. At first we thought we would have to go to a bigger SUV. However, with some research, we found that if we found a van that sat 8, we would be fine. Jason found a Chevy Venture in Boise. It was red with low miles. I called and asked some questions about it and told them that we would probably be coming soon to take a look at it. Jason took the day off work and we pulled Elena from school. We drove the scenic route through Arco, which was kind of fun! We stopped in Mountain Home and filled our van up because we were planning on driving it all the way back to Blackfoot. When we got to the dealership, we were disappointed to find that the van had not even been cleaned out or detailed yet! They had been posting it online for over a month! It was parked in mud which made looking at it a little tricky and yucky. Then the kicker was it wouldn't even start due to a battery problem. Needless to say, we were not too impressed. We were NOT driving a dirty car off a car lot! My van was cleaner than that one! Luckily, the night before Jason had noticed that another Venture Extended had been posted in the Boise area. We decided to take a look at that one. It had been on the lot a whopping 2 days and was still slightly damp from being detailed the night before. I took all the car seats out of our van to make sure they fit in the new one. We took it for a test drive and deemed it worthy. It was one year older than the red one with about 20,000 more miles but cost $1000 less. The guy offered free consignment of our other van so when they sell it, we'll get the check. We signed the paperwork and loaded all our belongings into the new van. A small piece of my heart broke as we drove away. I loved that van! We began the trip home and realized how dumb we were to have loaded the old van ALL the way up with gas since the one we were driving was almost empty. We barely made it back to Mountain Home to fuel up. We told ourselves that we technically saved $1000 instead of just handing over $60+ in gas money. The girls were really good for the whole trip. We only had a couple "don't touch your sister moments." They did think it was cool that all three could sit across the middle bench. My back was killing me by the end of the trip but we survived! We went from Gold to Silver but it's growing on me. Say "hello" to our new addition which will carry around all our additions in a few months: