Ridin' Mini

No, I did not get a Mini Cooper, much to my chagrin.

I've been procrastinating on making this public knowledge but I am now officially a minivan driver. Back in April I had talked about our struggle to figure out the best vehicle for the triplets and all the gear. We didn't really need to get a new car until the end of September so I've been driving the beast since then. It is a blue/gray Honda Odessey.

Let me just say that Rich is just in love with this thing. Whenever he finds a new gadget like for example pushing a button and the navigation screen folds down and behind it is the CD player, he expresses his undying love for such a clever vehicle. Since I'm still bitter that I'm the one driving it I usually revert back to a sarcastic 2nd grader and say something like, "If you like it so much, why don't you marry it?"

We did buy it used and told the salesman that we specifically needed one with a third seat in the middle row. This particular one didn't have a third seat but they switched out what was there (some sort of cup holder/table) and put a seat in. That was fine until we got home and tried to put in the car seats and realized there was no seat belt for the middle seat. I brought it back to the dealership and they said that this particular year didn't come with an option for a middle seat so there was no way to retrofit a seat belt from their end and there was really nothing they could do. WHAT???

So they sold us a car one seat belt short? Isn't there a law that there must be seat belts in a car? I mean this minivan isn't from the 50's or anything.

Anyway, we figured out that we didn't need the seat belt anyway because we have the car seats latched in but boy was I mad. That whole fiasco didn't endear me to my new ride.

When one of my friends found out that I now drove a minivan, she said that she hoped that I wouldn't turn into one of those maniac minivan drivers that drive crazy and think they own the road. I didn't really know what she was talking about until recently.

The babies are fine in the car most of the time. They occasionally are fussy and usually the motion of the car will quiet them down. The trouble is the red lights. When they are fussy and I stop for a red light they will start screaming. So now when I come to a red light I slow down way before the light and start pumping my brakes so the car jerks back and forth. I usually can time it pretty well and by the time I get to the car in front of me, the light has turned green, my vehicle has been in constant motion and the babies are still sleeping. I think it is genius. Is that what she means about maniac minivan drivers?

Again, Rich loves it. Just this weekend, he said, "This car has a solution for everything."

He was referring to the fact that my 32 oz Gatorade bottle fit perfectly into the cup holder in the door. There are 6 cup holders in the front seats alone.