We live in Hondaworld

Ever since we were expecting our fourth, I've been eyeing a new van. We got our first mini-van after Verity was born, in 2005. Before that we all fit into our Accord wagon. (We're somewhat fond of Hondas). (Ok, we're Honda fanatics). (Blame my uncle, he started it).

But when I had to ride squeezed into the 10 inch space between the girls' carseats in the back seat of the Accord, we realized we needed to give in and get a minivan. An Odyssey, of course. There didn't really seem to be any way we could afford that though. The Accord had come second hand from the aforementioned uncle who gave us a sweet deal. But I looked at the autotrader anyways. To my surprise and excitement, there were some old Odysseys out there that we could possibly handle purchasing. We went out to the Kitchener area to check out the cheapest. This 95' was going for about $3500 and once we got there it was obvious why. As I went to shift into gear during a test drive, the gear shift got stuck and wouldn't move. The salesguy nervously suggested that I just needed to really reef on it. Ok...buh-by now.

We ended up buying another 95' (earliest year Honda made the Odyssey) from some little place in TO for 5K. We were thrilled.

Now, this isn't actually our Odyssey. I realized when I went looking for a photo of big red, that we got our digital camera after that point, hence no pics of our first minivan. But google obliged me with this pic, quite close to ours. Except we didn't have a sunroof. Or those funky visors over the windows.

I'll bypass our unfortunate Hyundai experience...(You stray from the formula, you pay the consequences) and move onto the next Honda purchase, a little civic for James to take to work.

Unfortunately, we made the mistake of buying privately and that wasn't so rosy an experience. By now however, I would think you're starting to see our trend....

So back to the present. I got pregnant and we realized that our decision to buy a van with two bench seats was not so practical for 4 kids in carseats. Space overall became a bit of an issue, as the early Odyssey's were quite small. And I was having heartattacks in every parking lot with three kids trying out their independence on a four door (read: no sliders). So last week I started looking at Pilots. My brother had been razzing me that we should get a Pilot next, so I went to the Honda site to check them out. I clicked away, deciding that nope, I still liked the Odyssey better. On I clicked to autotrader and what did I find?

A mere 5 minute drive, over on Upper James, this 2000 (Yes!! Into the 2000's!!) Honda Odyssey was going for $5449. It wasn't red...but I didn't care...could we do it?

YES WE CAN!!