MATTHEW, STEPHANIE, EDEN & NOAH

Alas, it's been a good car but we finally said goodbye to the Tribute.  This past Friday Stephanie drove it for the last time.  After having driven the new Odyssey for nearly a week, she was amazed at how rough the Tribute rode/drove in comparison.  On Sunday I drove it for the first time (on the road, I did drive it some in the parking lot) and I must agree that it is a very smooth ride and it has good pickup.  It is a little more difficult to change lanes and manuever due to its size, but it only takes a little getting used to.  We also filled it up with gas for the first time and were pleasantly surprised to only put $32.00 into it.  Granted, we got gas at $1.83/gallon which was a miracle but it already seems to be just as good, if not better, on gas than the Tribute.  

Now we just need to decorate it with NC State stickers or something so that we can pick it out in the sea of other Silver Odysseys...

The ink is dry and the keys have been handed over.  Stephanie is, as I write this, cruising around in her new "mommy car" as Eden likes to phrase it.  We found a 2007 Honda Odyssey being sold privately that only had 22k miles on it.  It was in the right milage range for us and the price was great (at least $2,000 below blue book value).  It is silver with dark gray leather interior (which comes in very handy with cleaning up behind kids) as has an extended 100k mile warranty.  Not that we worried with it being a Honda, but it's always nice to have extra coverage.  This will defintely help out when Noah arrives in less than two weeks.

As for the Tribute, we have buyers for it but we're just waiting for the title to arrive in the mail before finalizing everything.  We're getting what we feel is a good price on it and hope the future owners get as much use out of it as we did.  It's been a good car but kids somehow cause you to outgrow smaller vehicles.

Now if we can just keep from turning into one of those maniacal minivan drivers...

...drives around in a minivan.

So it's been brewing for a while now, but it looks like it might finally become a reality.  Stephanie and I have been exploring the idea of getting rid of the Tribute and replacing it with a minivan.  Stephanie posted the Tribute on Craigslist and we've found a couple that want to purchase it for their daughter.  At the same time, we found a couple that is looking to sell their Honda Odessey for what we consider a good deal.  Now if we can get all of the titles and payments sorted out, we might finally be driving around in a minivan.

It's just too bad the Odessey doesn't look like this van, now that would be cool...