Our new van!

Earlier this month, I shared my resolutions for 2011.  One of those was to purchase a new van, and we completed that over this weekend!  Our old van was a 1997 Dodge Grand Caravan that we purchased in 2006.  It’s treated us really well these past 4.5 years, but it recently started having some major issues that would cost several thousand dollars more than the van is even worth to fix.  We decided that wasn’t a smart investment and decided to buy a new (to us) van.  Trust me, there were plenty of other places I would rather have spent this money (like landscaping our front yard!).  But it really wasn’t a question of IF the van would die, only a matter of WHEN. 

We went looking at vans here in town first.  We heard from some friends that vehicles are cheaper in Phoenix, so we decided to look around here and figure out what we even wanted first before heading out to Phoenix.  We found a van we loved at the Chrysler dealership here.  The guy was super nice and even said he’d drop the price way down for us.  We agreed on a price, and when Derk and I went in to sign the paperwork and pay for the van, the guy changed his price and tried selling it to us for $2,000 MORE than what we’d agreed on only an hour previously.  It was seriously frustrating.  Needless to say, we left that dealership without a van.

Derk has business trips lined up this month, plus he’s super swamped at work, so we decided we’d have to cram the car buying trip into this weekend.  I was worried that the old van would die while he was out of town, and that would just be super uncool.  We wanted to leave Friday evening, but Derk ended up having to do a private evaluation for another district on Saturday morning.  So we left Saturday afternoon and arrived in Phoenix around dinner time on Saturday.  Before we pulled out of our driveway, Derk patted our van and said, “Please, just last one more day for us!”  The kids thought that was funny, and Kyrie announced that she just KNEW Heavenly Father would make sure the van made it to Phoenix.   

Saturday night we just hung out in the hotel room, and Derk took the kiddos to the pool (I wasn’t feel very well).  Not many of us slept well that night.  We had 2 full beds in the hotel room, and it wasn’t quite enough space.   I was on one bed with the girls, and Derk was on the other with Asher.  For some reason, I woke up at midnight and saw Kyrie was still awake and playing her Nintendo DS!  She said she just couldn’t sleep.  I finally got her to turn it off, and then she was up again at 4am.  I got up shortly after that and decided to take a bath and read a magazine for a bit because I was just too uncomfortable to sleep.  Luckily Kyrie laid pretty quietly during that time and ended up dozing off for a bit. 

We all finally got up for the day at 6:30.  We wanted to make sure we got breakfast and then had a game plan for which dealerships we wanted to hit.  We ended up finding a few vans at dealerships I hadn’t seen online, so we were glad to have a few other options to consider.  It was seriously tough car shopping with the kids.  They did well considering how awfully bored they were, but we still had a hard time with them.  Luckily for us AND them, we had it narrowed down to 2 vans by 1:30 in the afternoon.  Both vans were the exact same (the prices were even within $20 of each other), so it was a hard decision.  The deciding factors for us were:  #1 - the color, and #2 – one had 4K less miles, and #3 - a year of roadside assistance was included with one of them, and most importantly #4 - this particular dealership lowered their price another $250 to convince us to buy from them.  We had the paperwork signed and were driving off the lot by 2:30pm.  All in all, after food/hotel/gas, we saved $800 buying in Phoenix!

I knew my mom especially would want to see pictures!  So this post is for you, Mom!  I even took a fun video for you.   

We ended up getting a 2005 Chrysler Town and Country Touring.  It has so many super cool features!  I feel insanely spoiled now, which is fine by me!    It has leather seats, which we weren’t too sure about at first, but I really like them.  It has stow-and-go, bucket seats (2 separate seats in the middle row instead of a bench seat), rear air conditioning, a compass/thermometer display (so it tells us the temperature and which direction we’re driving), a 6-CD disc changer, adjustable pedals, built-in garage door opener, keyless entry, the doors all have sensors (so if someone is standing in the way of the door, it won’t close on them), it “dips” down in the trunk area to give more room for storage, and it’s way more spacious than our old van. 

Here are some pictures!

And here’s my goofy video:

Untitled from Hillary Stephens on Vimeo.

 

We love it!