A minivan?!

Yes, we bought a minivan.  No, I still can't believe that we went through with it.  But here's why we did:

1. We needed a bigger car.  Will had a small truck, and I had a Toyota Corolla.  With the baby coming in the fall, we knew we needed more space. 
2. We wanted to buy a car that would last us the next 4-5 years.  We know that we are not finished building our family yet, and at the rate we are going, in 4-5 years we could have 8-10 more kids! (haha- totally kidding on that point!) But in all seriousness, we could legitimately see 1-2 more kids in the next few years.  We don't want to have to buy again in a year or two.
3.  We talked about getting an SUV, but we knew we'd need one with a 3rd row (see above), and Kristen really struggles to get in and out of Will's truck, and also my dad's SUV on her own.  I didn't want to have to lift her into the car everytime she needed to get in or out.  Also, when we looked at SUV's with 3rd rows (that we could afford) there was NO storage space unless you took out the 3rd row, and we wondered what we would do on vacations.
4.  Kristen is at the age when she wants to bring friends with her when we go places.  We want to support that.  Of course, there are some friends whose houses we don't mind if she goes over to, but there are many friends of hers, from school especially, that we don't know the parents, and we don't feel comfortable letting her go with their family places.  So... we want her to be able to invite those friends to go places with us, or to come to our house, so we can keep an eye on what's going on.  We want to set this precident now, so that it will continue when she's a teenager.  We needed more space in order to do that.
5.  So we began looking Memorial Day weekend, thinking we would just start the process of looking.  We had a tight budget, and had a very specific idea of what we were looking for.  We figured it would take a while to find what we wanted, but that was fine, because we really just wanted it by Octoberish.  But then we found this van, that was way under our budget, and was a much better van than we thought we'd be able to get, so we decided to pull the trigger.

...and that, my friends, is how we became a minivan family, and I have to say, that although my "coolness" level has significantly dropped (not sure there was much to begin with), it's a sacrifice I am willing and excited to make, because it means that the children that we have prayed for, for so many years, are *quickly* filling our home. :)