MInivan!

As most of you know, Michael's beloved Lexus drowned on Ansley's birthday. It will be sorely missed. It was red, it was sporty, it was luxurious, and it had air conditioning that came through the seats

Last week, the Mazda decided to overheat. Michael did some manly-fixing things to it, but the minivan is a stubborn piece of machinery, and continues to be weird and untrustworthy.

This led to a new minivan hunt this weekend, before Michael returns his rental car. He hasn't yet decided what kind of car he wants to replace the Lexus, but we've had our minivan decision narrowed to a Honda versus Toyota for months now.

After online research and test drives, we settled on the Toyota Sienna. We went with new because minivans hold their value well (used ones didn't offer a significant price reduction) and the combination of options we wanted was hard to find.

It is a very pretty silver thing sitting in our garage with its eighty mile odometer reading, new car smell, and shiny everything. It reminds me of the Lexus in how it handles and the comfort of the seats, even though a/c doesn't feed through the seat cushions. Oh well. The Honda salesman wondered why nobody offered that in a minivan. I did, too. I'm sure it would be an immensely popular one, especially here in Texas.

It will be nice not to have to ask the teachers in the carpool lane to shut the sliding door they assumed was automatic. It will be nice to scoot Emberly's seat far back so she can't kick the driver. It will be nice to have the navigation system and dvd player for long trips. It even comes with an extra eighth seat that stores in the trunk. And that's just scratching the surface of nice things about this car.