Saab Story

You might remember that when Derek and Cooper when to Iowa a while back they had a collision with a deer.  It busted up the car pretty good and our insurance decided the car wasn't worth the cost of repairs and declared our fun little Saab wagon totaled.

They gave us a fair payout for it (an amount we were thrilled with, actually) and we began the search for a new car.   That quickly and very unexpectedly turned into a search for...wait for it...  a minivan! :)   In all honestly the car was a bit cramped with all three boys in it.  And having driven a rental van when we were in Florida in the spring, we'd realized just how convenient they are.  Derek even had a camera guy at work suggest we look for a van, he's a young married guy with no kids and loves driving the rental vans when out on shoots.  Ha.  "They hold a lot of gear", I'm told.

So having decided we would be driving a minivan soon, we started our search.  We scouted out a few around town one weekend while Trey took the big boys to a movie...

Then did a couple test drives here and there in the evenings during the week.

Car dealerships aren't open on Sundays but a couple Saturdays were dedicated to the search.  And by search I mean that Miles searched for bugs...  no matter what we're doing, Miles will search for bugs. :)

One dealership had a play area, along with popcorn and drinks.

That was exciting...  ha.

Or a nice, cool place to take a nap. 

(Did I mention it was SO, SO hot the days we were searching?)

We looked, and re-looked at quite a few vans.

Checking them over carefully, sometimes at the lot after they'd closed. ha.

The excitement of this sort of thing wears off pretty quickly...

We were planning to make a short drive to look at a van one evening, and Cooper saw these coupons in the mail that day.  He'd been asking to go to Steak-n-Shake for a while!  Then he saw one that he was sure would lure me in... He mentioned it to me in a sing songy voice: "There's one for free coffee, Mom".  He knows me very well.

Miles was looking very sleeping once we hit the road and was fighting sleep because he was afraid he'd miss the test drive.  Once I informed him that we would make sure and take him along and not leave him sleeping, he was out within seconds.

We got to our destination and hopped in for spin. The boys realized this one had a DVD player/Media center and were immediately sure this was the one!

After our test drive, Derek and I thought it might be 'the one' too.

So the boys and I hung out while Derek tried to strike a deal with the salesman.

And the boys hunted bugs too.

Derek was able to make a deal, so then we had to wait around while the paperwork was ready for us.  There were more free sodas at this dealership...

So we took advantage of them ...

...while watching "American Ninja Warrior".

Soon, we were all done and on our way! Never say "never", huh?

The new "Mleynek Mobile" is a minivan!

A 2008 Chrysler Town & Country.

It was pretty late by the time it was all wrapped up.  And we grabbed dinner at Steak-n-Shake.  You're welcome, Cooper!  And thank you, random coupons in the mail.

Then we took the new ride home to introduce it to our garage.

It's sure not what I'd imagined I'd be driving a couple years ago, or maybe even a couple months ago, but it's where we're at in life right now and so far it's a great fit for us. (Sigh, yep.)