Back in October, while driving my van in heavy traffic, I  slammed on the brakes which, unbeknownst to me, caused the last rusty bolt holding the power brakes together to come out, making it almost impossible to actually come to a stop unless I pressed the brake all the way to the floor. While driving in heavy traffic. After inching my way home and then inching the van to the mechanic the next day, I learned it would need a minimum of $700 in repairs just to get the brakes working again. That did not include the lengthy list of other repairs it needed.  Since just driving it back and forth was dangerous enough, we cut our losses and sold it for a couple of hundred bucks to a parts place.

We became a one-car family, which turned out to be easier than I thought it would be. Since Chris carpools to work anyway, all I had to do was drive him to carpool pick-up in the morning and then go get him in the evening. It’s really not that bad, although I like to talk and Chris likes to listen to the radio, so it took us a few days to adjust. Which pretty much means, I talk less

So we were going along, sharing our beloved Chevy Classic (like a Malibu, but a limited edition, we bought it used) and figuring out who would have the car and when, until this past Friday, when everything went all kablooey.  I had woken up feeling really crappy, so I told Chris to just take the car and drive himself to work and back. He was really late getting home from work that night,  and he had forgotten to take his phone with him, so I had no way to call him. I just assumed he or one of his carpool-mates had to work late. When he walked in the door though, it was not with happy news.

It seemed that all of a sudden the car was overheating, and he had to stop FIVE times to let the engine cool down before he could continue. It took him three hours to drive 45 miles.  He knows enough about cars to know that whatever was wrong, it wasn’t going to be cheap to fix, either.  We knew we had no choice but to buy another car and take on a car loan.  There was just one problem – how do you go out and buy a car when you don’t HAVE a car?

Fortunately for us, Chris’ sister was in town, so Saturday morning, she drove Chris to the airport to rent a car from Hertz. They gave us a zippy little VW Jetta that I really liked driving, and we set out Saturday afternoon in search of a van. It had been really uncomfortable trying to cram our three kids into the back of the Chevy, and Chris likes having a van because of the room for hauling home lumber for his furniture projects.

Long story short, we bought a 2004 Ford Freestar minivan, which might not be brand new but has a heck of a lot more features than our bare-bones 1998 van did. It’s got a DVD player which Kaitlyn LOVES, and the power sliding doors which we all think are pretty cool, and the back seats that fold right down into the floor which means no hauling the entire back bench seat OUT every time we need the room. We’re still a one-vehicle family, but we’re a much more comfortable and happy one-vehicle family, so that’s the happy ending to this very long story!