New Wheels

If I've never mentioned it before, I LOVE our minivan!  It's a Toyota Sienna, and it's amazing.  It's my dream car really.  We bought it when I was pregnant with Wade.  Curtis wasn't very thrilled with the idea, but he went with it as I would be the primary driver anyway.  I think he's come to love the van as much as I do.  Well, maybe not *as* much, but pretty close.  I'm sure people thought we were jumping the gun.  Why does a family of only 3 need a minivan?  I just love the roominess of it.  I was actually visualizing many road trips to VA in said van.  And not to mention, the thing has 14 cup holders!!!  I'm big on cup holders.  In fact, I traded in a car because it didn't have amble room in the TWO cup holders!

In hindsight, the maybe premature purchase of the minivan has been a blessing.  I never imagined we would need as much room as we do for one child.   Besides being able to seat seven comfortably without having to climb over seats, it holds Wade's sit to stand and chairs and strollers all quite easily.  His adaptive stroller would almost take up the whole trunk in a standard car.  You can also load in tons of stuff from IKEA without a problem!  Gotta love stow and go seats!



Unfortunately, because of Wade's growing needs, it's almost time to upgrade to a wheelchair accessible van.  I hate saying goodbye to our wonderful, roomy van.  I thought we'd have this thing for years.  But, Wade is getting his own set of wheels--hopefully within the month--and we'll need a way to transport him and his brand new power wheelchair!  We'll loose the two captain chairs in the middle, so we'll only have the third row bench seat.  We'll also loose room in the back because the seats won't be able to fold down and the spare tire has to be stored there.  But, all in all, I'm glad there are vans modified especially for these purposes.

While we were in VA, we visited The Van House.  My dad knows the owner, so we talked to him about pros and cons of the different modifications--side entry, rear entry, power ramp, manual ramp, slide under door, etc.  Now that we're back in TX, we'll visit the local dealer here and hopefully have a new van pretty soon.  Right now we're leaning towards another Toyota--side entry, fold up power ramp.