The Family Van

Nissan NV Update

February 10, 2013 by LoraLynn

Our van hit 10,000 miles this week.

Which seems like a good time to update you on how we like our ride. The review I wrote of our Nissan 12-passenger NV is still one of my most popular posts. I get new questions every week and some of you have even sent me pictures of your snazzy new wheels. I love it!

So here’s the stuff I know now that I didn’t know then:

You will literally stop traffic. I was pulling through a drive-thru once and I had a man walk up to the speaker where I was ordering and demand to know what mileage the van gets. BEFORE I’d finished my request for chicken mini biscuits and a sweet tea. He was so insistent I had to answer him before the server could give me my total and tell me to drive around.

Please note: I am happy to answer your questions, I’ll probably even let you look inside, but let a girl order her chicken first, ok?

P.S. 14-18 in town, 21 on highway. You’re welcome.

We regularly field questions about our van from random strangers on the road, at gas stations, and yes, even in the drive-thru. If you make this purchase, be prepared to be friendly!

Vacationing in the NV:

In September, we filled the van to the brim with 12 people and enough stuff to feed and clothe us for a week at the beach. And we had us a comfortable ride to our vacation.
I LOVE having the headrests fit on any seat in the back so I know that no matter where we squeeze any adult riders in, they have a comfy place to rest their heads.
Go ahead and spring for the trailer hitch. We installed the trailer ball on the back ourselves (in the dark at 10 pm, not recommended) but the pigtail that you need to make the lights work on a trailer and such is really easiest installed by a dealer.
We used the hitch to add a cargo extender on the back for our beach trip. Worked like a charm.
Cruise control. It is a God-send.
We actually go places now. And we don’t mind.

Twelve Seats and How We Rearrange Them:

We make use of the flexibility of seating like WHOA. When we were getting our house ready to sell, we rearranged everyone so that Andrew could pop out half of the back seat and stuff boxes to haul to storage with our whole gang in tow.
Andrew can leave car seats attached to the seats and remove them from the van. This makes reconfiguring SO much easier.
The back row splits in half and each half has wheels. So even though those are pretty heavy seats to get out the back door, once you do, it’s super easy to roll them right into the garage.

Other Things We Love:

That center console up front. It is my everything. It’s got TONS of storage and it’s comfortable to lean on. There’s also a plug and a slot for your charger cord so you can juice up your phone inside the console if you need to. (With that many people in the van, we’re bound to have more than one device that needs charging at a time. Nissan clearly thought of this.)
We use the auxiliary input to play our iPods all the time. And I hear from some of you that the Bluetooth is wonderful, too.

Our One Complaint:

That driver’s side head rest. It doesn’t bother me, but for taller guys like Andrew, he will get a headache on long trips from having his head pitched slightly forward. The dealer insists it’s a safety feature, so we’ll stay stocked up on Advil and roll with it. In the grand scheme of things, it’s a tiny price to pay for a ride that we love.

There are a ton of great questions and comments on my original post. I tried to answer everyone’s questions there, so check there for more info.

Also, we received a LOT of questions about being able to reverse the second row. There are conflicting versions of this from the dealer. I’m doing my homework and we’ll get back to you on it.

Whenever we load up to go somewhere and we finally buckle the last car seat and get the preferred tunes playing, I always sit back for a minute and just breathe in the sweetness of riding together. I remember many days when I would have been happy just to have something… anything, that would hold all of us.

And now: we’re together, we’re comfortable, and sometimes God’s goodness just overwhelms me, even if its only about a hunk of metal on wheels.

There’s something about being contained in a small space that’ll make you crazy and make you feel crazy blessed all at once.

Even if that “small space” is a gigantic twelve-passenger van…

Filed Under: Random, The Family Van
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Nissan NV 3500 12 Passenger Review – What A Big Family Thinks

May 24, 2012 by LoraLynn

If you’re in the market for a new van, start with this explanation of why we got rid of our Sprinter.

An update to our review can be found here.

We’ve been a Nissan family since our pre-marriage days, when Andrew sported around in a five-speed Maxima. It was very hard to let go of our Quest when we needed more room. That’s why we were really excited to test drive the Nissan NV 3500 as soon as it came out. It did not disappoint. And it went home with us that very day.

The van is eye-catching without being an eyesore. When we rode around town in our Sprinter, we couldn’t help but be noticed as we roared into the parking lot. With the NV we stand out, but it has less to do with looking like the FedEx truck and more to do with driving a spiffy-looking van that no one has seen before.

To me, the van looks like the Nissan Titan truck and the Nissan Cube had a gigantic baby. The front of the van looks like a Titan. The back is more like a box. I feel like I’m driving an extra large SUV rather than a van. And what red-blooded American can’t appreciate a good SUV?

One of the first things we noticed about the van was how quiet it was. Now, we were coming from a Sprinter, where we sat on top of the engine, so just about anything would seem quieter. But when you’ve got a bunch of people in the car, it’s important to be able to hear each other. Driving in the car is part of “family togetherness” but it’s useless if we can’t understand what anyone has to say. In the NV, as long as the music isn’t turned up too loud, I can hear the requests/demands/complaints/jokes/stories from the child in the very back seat.

Speaking of seats, there are a lot of seating options. Nissan claims there are 324 ways to configure the seats. It took Andrew and I two hours of pondering to figure out the best way to arrange our people, so, yea, there are several choices. The reason for this is that all three back rows have split seating and each section of seats can be removed. And the first back row can actually face backwards if you feel so inspired.

It’s like the Baskin Robbins’ 31 Flavors of the transportation world.

We chose to remove one of the seats to create a sort of aisle for the kids to get to their spot. When we take big trips, we’ll move everyone around a bit so that we can remove half of the very back seat for cargo storage. The good news is: even if we remove seats for cargo, we will still have an extra seat to take a helper with us wherever we go. Hooray!

Cargo space… We gave up some cargo space when we sold our Sprinter. But we have more cargo space than some of the Chevy Express vans I’ve been in. And the option to remove part of the back seat means we have much more flexibility to haul all our stuff. We can also put a trailer hitch on the back and use one of those back end attachments for more trunk space. The fact that I can get my double stroller in the back of the van means the cargo space is definitely adequate.

Here’s a list of the other things we like:

Good driving experience. It feels really wide when you get behind the wheel. And it is. But you quickly realize you will fit between the parking space lines and you don’t have to swing as wide as you think you do. It’s like driving a truck, not a top-heavy van.
Comfort in the front seat. A non-contraction-inducing ride for the grown-ups and lots of room. Lovely. Plus, we can hear each other now, so it’s like a date!
Great mirrors. With the headrests and such, you can’t really see out the back but you don’t need to because Nissan put big and small sideview mirrors in all the right places. I can see everything I need to for safe driving.
Lots of storage in the front. We haven’t tried, but I’m pretty sure we could store baby Finn in the center console. It was designed to hold a laptop and hanging file folders… or small children, apparently.
Power, power, everywhere! There’s a plug-in outlet on every row to accommodate our geeky selves with our laptops and iPads. There are even two 120-volt plugs that you can plug things directly into.
Shoulder belts and headrests for all twelve passengers. This has never been available in a van before to those of us who exceed the mini-vans. This is HUGE. The headrests are removable if you prefer.
Side air-bags all the way to the back. Good for our insurance. Even better for our kids.
The side door can be opened by the kids. There’s no fancy button that opens and closes it, but the door glides easily enough that my eight year olds can handle it.
Rear sonar. It helps to have some notice if there’s something behind me.
The back doors swing all the way open and then magnetize to the side of the van so no one will get hit by the doors. When we’re packing our van for a long trip, it’s nice to know we don’t have to worry about somebody getting the back door slammed on them while we’re trying to decide where to put the sleeping bags.

Things that gave us pause:

Driver’s side headrest. We had this problem in our Quest, too. The front seat headrests pitch your head forward, which can be awkward on a long drive. I asked our dealership about it and they said it’s considered a safety feature, so it can’t be changed. However, adjusting the tilt of the driver’s seat seemed to help. It would be nice if Nissan would add just one more “click” so the headrest can go just a tick higher to accommodate my hubby’s handsome head.
We got the V6 engine and coming from having a turbo diesel engine that literally ROARED, the V6 took some time to get used to. Even though I have to press harder to get the van to respond in a hurry, the van WILL respond and I have the power when I need it. In terms of gas mileage, we’re satisfied with about 15-18 mpg, and we live in a town with lots of hills. If we got the V8 we’d just spend more on gas so the V6 was the right choice for us.
The back row seats are definitely narrow. Any vehicle that holds twelve people will have narrow seats. For those of you with lots of carseats, you’ll probably still only be able to get three carseats in that back row of four seats, unless you have all Radian carseats. However, the foot room on that very back row is excellent. Andrew and I can sit back there comfortably. The van definitely feels very roomy and Nissan made the most of the space.

Bottom Line: The Nissan NV 3500 is a great option for families. And I don’t think you have to be a family of “unusually large size” to like it. If we took out the back row of seats, we’d have a great eight passenger SUV type vehicle with more cargo space than any mini-van ever dreamed of having. We trust the Nissan brand to get us where we need to go for many years. And the incredible seating flexibility means that we’ve got options, no matter what our family looks like.

************

If you’re still with me after all of those words I can only assume you’re really interested in the Nissan. So I must tell you about the dealership where we bought our van. If you’re located in the southeastern region of the US, listen up!

There are only three dealerships in Alablama that carry this van. I called all three. Only ONE consistently returned my calls and emails: Larry Richardson of Landers/McLarty Nissan. He met us halfway between our cities with the van so we could test drive it. And then he deftly handled our crew for the many hours we took at the dealership signing paperwork. Andrew actually left the dealership smiling and my husband LOATHES the car buying process.

Even though there are dozens of dealerships closer to us, we will definitely call Larry again when our small car needs to be replaced because our experience with him was THAT good.

And if you call Larry (256-837-5753 ext. 315), make sure you tell him the Vitafam sent you. I want him to know that all his efforts with us were worthwhile!

*Nobody paid me or gave me a free car for this review. They should have, but they didn’t.

Hi.

April 22, 2012 by LoraLynn

Hi. I’m three years old and cute. Even in a stocking cap.

Hi. We’re just two crazy kids who fell in love, blinked, and became a family of nine who just bought a for-real (non-white) 12 passenger van.

Hi. We’re the crazy kids now. Mommy makes us raise our hands in the van to make sure we didn’t forget anybody. And to say hi.

Hi. I’m beaming because the Beast has been replaced by a newer, shinier model and we no longer have to shout at each other in the car to be heard.

Hi. I gained a pound in one week. Mom is exhausted. I’m awesome.

So.

Hi.

Tell me things… How was YOUR weekend?

Filed Under: Family Pictures, The Family Van
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A Weird Day

September 29, 2011 by LoraLynn

Our homeschool group attends several plays a year that are geared for preschoolers. My boys had a love/hate relationship with these plays. The noise and darkness scared them, but they liked the chance to leave the house. They still tense up at the mention of going to the theater, but then they got mad at me when I announced that only the three girls and I would be seeing today’s play. So I guess their inner turmoil continues.

The play was Cinderella. I figured that was pretty safe. No trolls, no wolves, no creatures of any sort.

I didn’t count on the wicked stepmother being a man in drag.

I didn’t really have time to process that development before Mira had a total come apart and I had to leave the theater. My older girls were left behind with some friends, who very sweetly offered their laps for comfort. I’ll add “our mother left us alone in a theater with a freaky lady with a five o’clock shadow on stage” to the myriad of reasons I have to pay for therapy down the road.

Mira was adamant that she wasn’t going back in the theater.

If I stepped in the door: Waaah.

I stepped out: Silence.

In: Waaaaaah.

Out: Silence.

After about six rounds of this little hokey-pokey, I gave up. I managed to make eye contact with my friend who had Willa in her lap and let her know I couldn’t come rescue my girls until the play was over. Then I stood outside and listened intently for any screams that sounded like Ellen or Willa.

After the play, I checked in with Andrew. I’d left the three boys to do schoolwork and play Legos. I figured they’d be fine. They apparently did their schoolwork and then set about wiping the contents of the iPad completely. I’m not even sure how they did it, but we hadn’t updated it in awhile, so we lost a lot of apps.

Andrew managed to get something else out about Ian getting sick and going to bed and some sort of cantaloupe listeria scare I need to add to the list of things that keep me up at night, and then I got stuck in traffic and we hung up. Then I noticed that another warning light was on in the dashboard of the Beast…

Since we got home, we’ve been curled up on my bed, watching cartoons and cuddling. And it’s entirely possible we’ll spend the whole day right here. After all, there’s no technology, no scary cantaloupes, and no evil stepmothers in drag.

Sounds perfect. – Scroll down for the weirdest P.S. ever…

P.S. Literally seconds before I hit publish on this post, Andrew walked up and ordered me out of the house. I trust him, so I ran. A few minutes later, he returned with a hoe in his hand and announced he had just killed a snake in our hallway. Because he thought quickly and sent me away before I saw it, I am not currently packing our boxes to move. Instead, I’m wearing my shoes and hyperventilating my hero worship of my husband.

And I’m seriously staying in bed for the next 24 hours…

Filed Under: Family Stories, Homeschooling, The Family Van
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Proverbs According to Twitter

September 4, 2011 by LoraLynn

Andrew had to be at church early this morning so when I got up, the first thing I did was put on my big girl panties (and the rest of my attire). Then I fed and dressed the children for church, with ten minutes to spare before we had to leave. I had the nerve to tweet about it:

My next tweet, several hours later, would state the obvious: A proud tweet goeth before a fall…

I got everyone loaded into the van and cranked it up. Immediately, a warning light I’d never seen before appeared on the dashboard. Our van didn’t come with a manual and those weird European symbols mean nothing to us. And since I don’t speak German and the Beast doesn’t speak Southern, we were at an impasse. So with everyone still strapped in, I went running around the neighborhood until I found someone who spoke “Man,” which was the next best thing to speaking “Mechanic.”

We killed about fifteen minutes checking various fluids before he decided the van was thirsty. A pitcher of water later and we hit the road, light-free.

This meant we were late to church. And it was raining. Without Andrew to help me corral the gang, I let Sam lead my little line of ducks and I brought up the rear carrying Mira. This allowed me a clear view of everybody so I could correct and instruct them in the ways of putting one foot in front of the other.

It’s amazing how much help they need with basic walking.

Sam led our frazzled little group into the sanctuary and straight up our normal aisle. Here’s the catch: our “normal” pew has recently been claimed by another family. They’re very sweet and we don’t mind a bit, especially since we can still find room one pew down. (Pews are at a premium for families with young kids because there are only a few of them and we all want to avoid losing a child in a folding theater seat.) But my children have still not adjusted to the change.

So Sam went smack-dab to the middle of the church and started high-fiving everyone on our usual row. My other little ducks quickly broke rank and followed suit. Children ran everywhere…While the pastor was talking up front. My friend Sophie got a front row view of this anarchy and had a good giggle at my expense.

Sam even went so far as to try to sit in the laps of the family that was in our spot. Further proof that my people are not good with change.

I regained some semblance of control to get us to the proper pew, one row over, where Andrew was waiting. Then I sat down and sweated a bit, relieved that the hard part was over.

Foolish me.

After church, Andrew took a little spin with us in the Beast to make sure it was running properly. On the way back to church to drop him off (his presence was still required), yet another warning light came on the dashboard.

It’s a wonder I didn’t drive the Beast into the nearest brick wall.

We determined it was the tire pressure and did a U-turn to find the nearest gas station. Andrew didn’t have a lot of time, but he put a bit of air in the tires and informed me that I would need to get one of the guys from our small group to put in more when I arrived at my next destination.

I considered giving up and heading for home.

Instead, we took Andrew back to the church and then turned around and headed to Zaxby’s for lunch. The rain was coming down fairly constant and I could feel the stress oozing from my pores. I pulled into the drive-thru lane only to quickly lay on my horn and slam on the brakes. Somebody was backing out and, mysteriously, couldn’t see me in all my Beastly Largeness.

We took a nice little skid across the wet parking lot on our half-flat tires but we avoided catastrophe. I was shaking and breathless at the drive-thru window and couldn’t tell you for the life of me what I ordered.

I then pulled into a parking place and texted Andrew that today would have been better served if I had stayed in bed, under the covers, preferably wearing a helmet.

Have I told you all that we figured out Ellen’s love language? It’s Quality Time. Now, my sister is a Quality Time sort, but her version of it when I was in high school involved following me around and watching me in silence. Ellen’s version of Quality Time involves me serving as an audience to her one-woman monologue.

(The original Miss Quality Time with her protege… and 2 yahoos in the background.)

I know it’s important to let her talk and usually she and I muddle along fairly well. Normally, she’s not really offended when I ask her to give Mommy a second to think an actual thought.

Which is fortunate, because what I needed more than anything at that moment was for her NOT to give me a play-by-play of the last five minutes.

So I took a deep breath and announced to the van, “Ladies and Gentlemen. You cannot see it, but Mommy’s head is spinning on her shoulders. I need you to not talk for a few minutes so my head doesn’t fly off completely.”

Then I said a quick prayer thanking God for sparing us from our love of fried chicken and announced Silent Time.

This was a wise move. The children chewed and I lit into my french fries and tea while I tried to still my shaky hands. It took a few miles of road between us and Zaxby’s before I was able to take a deep breath, unscrunch my shoulders, and picture sweet Ann Voskamp in a wheat field talking about grace.

And then it was all okay…

#659 – Neighbors who work on cars.

#660 – Mira sat in the sanctuary the whole service. A first! (Probably because she snuck a piece of a protein bar she’d pilfered off the floor of the van in her little hand and I didn’t notice it until after the first song or two. She gnawed it for a good twenty minutes and silence reined.)

#661 – Half sweet/half unsweet tea from Zaxby’s. Their ice is just lovely.

#662 – Friends who have air compressors and tire gauges. All of our tires needed air before we could leave small group.

#663 – A rainy Sunday. Because they’re slightly inconvenient, but oh-so-very cozy.

#664 – Safety. Safety, safety, safety, safety. And a Beast without any warning lights… for the moment.

Thanks for humoring me while I work out my grateful-fors list in a public way. Some days, searching for God’s grace in the crazy is all that gets me through.

Filed Under: Family Stories, Mothering Thoughts, The Family Van
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NOT A Safe Day

August 30, 2011 by LoraLynn

You know how I said yesterday that if it was a slow day, it meant we were all safe?

Today was NOT a slow day.

Adam’s face connected with the metal bar on the trampoline before 8:15 this morning. We didn’t x-ray it, but his nose was crooked and so was his face. So we took the morning to get him an adjustment. He cried more about having to go to the chiropractor than he did when she set his nose. She got his eyebrows lined up properly again and then I treated everybody to slushees.

We’d earned it.

And Adam feels tons better.

The kids were wild after naptime, but we had a Costco trip and a Whole Foods trip that had to be done. We convinced ourselves that they’re usually fine once we leave the house and headed out.

While sitting in a turn lane, the truck in front of us inexplicably went into reverse. Andrew laid on the horn, but to no avail. The Beast sustained a hit. Fortunately, the Beast is aptly named, so no harm was done. Andrew did have to jump out of the van to stop the guy’s truck from rolling back and hitting us again. Nothing like seeing your man catch a pick-up truck to get a girl all aflutter.

Costco went fine.

And then there was Whole Foods.

Nobody went screaming down the aisles or anything, at least, not until the very end. But it was very much a case of herding puppies. We tried to avoid the nonsense by feeding the kids dinner at the tables while I did the shopping. But they finished faster than I did.

Locusts.

The final straw was when I took the four older children to the restroom right as we were checking out. Now, I’ve been in that bathroom dozens of times and never seen a soul. When I took four kids in with me, there was a crowd. There weren’t enough stalls to go around. Sam got himself locked in a stall. Adam sat on the floor several times and I wanted to heave into a trash can.

There was the wrestling match that ended with Ellen getting tossed on the floor and knocking over the trash can. Everybody felt the need to wash their hands three times, despite the lines of people forming behind them. And to the lady that I caught one of the kids peeking under the stall at… well, I’m really sorry.

Andrew picked us up at the curb outside the store. I climbed into my seat and burst into tears. I’m a big advocate of practicing behavior before we leave the home. It just never occurred to me to practice Public Restroom Behavior.

Lesson learned.

We’ll have Bathroom Boot Camp first thing in the morning. In the meantime, I’ve got a pint of ice cream calling my name. And I need to sit down with my grateful-fors list and write these:

#651 – An available chiropractor.

#652 – That the Beast has been running solid for an entire 4 days now.

#653 – A husband who doesn’t mind going to meetings late with a little blood on his pants.

#654- That it doesn’t matter if we start school at 9 am or 11 am.

#655 – Mira made her first family outing without screaming or puking in the back seat. Victory!

#656 – Boys who bring their brother his favorite pirate shirt to replace the bloodied one.

#657 – Tiny pink footprints on the floor from spraying the girls’ feet with calamine lotion. (They got in ants last night. Drama.)

#658 – A house full of groceries and no need to leave it for days…

Yesterday, your comments about your “normal” made me feel much better about my own. How about some “grateful-fors” to keep us all entrenched in grace?

Filed Under: Family Stories, The Family Van
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A Day Trip With the Vitafam

July 30, 2011 by LoraLynn

Andrew’s gift to me when we brought Mira home was one year of someone else cleaning my house. It was like a “Push Present,” but infinitely more practical. And wonderful. This once-a-month scrubbing of my home has completely altered my life this year. And to all of you who wonder how I “do it all,” now you know the truth. Currently, I don’t.

For thirty blissful seconds when we enter our home after Mrs. C. leaves, it’s somebody else’s house. It’s clean and it smells good and it isn’t cluttered.

And then somebody does something disgusting and we’re back to being US again.

My point is, once a month, we have to leave our house for the day. Usually, we invade Grampaw’s house. But we’ve had the sniffles and I wasn’t willing to share that gift with my family because, well, we want them to like us. I did not have the same concern for the population of greater Atlanta, because instead of heading to Grampaw’s house, we went to our nearest Ikea.

We’re “this close” to being done with our upstairs re-do but we couldn’t advance any further until we’d paid our dues to the Temple of Cheap Home Decor. Thursday seemed like the perfect day to make the pilgrimage.

First, a bit of celebration. For a nearly three hour drive, Mira did fantastic on the way there. No screaming, no puking. She talked and chattered. She laughed. She napped beautifully. She confirmed what Andrew and I have secretly been hoping: we’re turning a corner with our girl. She’s starting to believe we’ll stick.

We made it through Ikea in a respectable three hours. Just as we had finished loading our THIRD cart, Andrew had to take a conference call. I opted to sit just before the cash registers and let Mira wander around a bit while we waited the 10 or 15 minutes Andrew thought it would take.

Thirty minutes later, I decided that Andrew was never coming back. The smell of cinnamon rolls had made him crazy and he’d left us to fend for ourselves with our cheap, flat-packed furniture.

Apparently Andrew wasn’t the only one driven mad by the smell of cinnamon they must surely pipe through the air ducts in that place.

I got six kids and three carts in line by myself. I think we only had a few casualties when Ian got going a bit too fast and couldn’t stop his cart. (Oh, and for the benefit of the lady in Lowe’s, nobody stood on a shopping cart all day. My kids DROVE the shopping carts – which I would argue is more dangerous – but nobody stood on them. So there.)

Andrew appeared as the last cart was being rung up at the cash register. Fortunately, he’d only gotten stuck on his phone call and hadn’t really left us to die near the “As-Is” section.

The Beast proved useful to hold us, our six kids, our three carts worth of stuff, and a six pack of cinnamon rolls with room to spare. When it works, that van is wonderful.

Even though all we’d had to eat all day was doughnuts, cheap hotdogs, and cinnamon rolls, we got home too late for me to cook dinner. So we swung by Chik-Fil-A for a platter of nuggets and then promised ourselves we’d make the kids eat a vegetable with their high fructose corn syrup chicken.

I walked into our clean house and breathed in that blissful moment of “This is somebody else’s house, somebody who cleans her toilet with a toothbrush.”

And then Adam walked in and dropped the entire platter of chicken nuggets on the floor.

Just like that, those floors were ours again.

But this time, they were clean enough to eat off of. And so we did…

Filed Under: Adoption, Family Stories, The Family Van, Vitafam On Vacation
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Why There Was Peanut Butter On the Floor: Welcome to the Vortex of Adventure

July 23, 2011 by LoraLynn

My friend Aubrey often teases me that she never gets stuck in traffic or has trouble ordering food in restaurants unless she’s coming to see me. She points out that Andrew and I are always in some sort of scrape or drama or adventure and that it simply isn’t safe to spend too much time in our presence.

I told her she should not fear our Vortex of Adventure. (Say it with a deep James Earl Jones voice and a cymbal clash.)

She said she’d just stay home, thankyewverymuch.

She’s kind of right, though. Just about the time I think we’ve become nothing but boring people who paint bedrooms and change diapers, we have a day like yesterday. A swirling Vortex of Adventure.

It all started when we remembered that Friday morning was co-op pick-up day. We order our food in bulk and we pick it up once a month. Andrew drove to meet the truck, but the truck was very late. Since my husband does indeed have a job he needed to get back to, a friend of ours offered to get our order for us and meet us at a horse barn not too far from our house later in the day.

Meanwhile, some other friends of ours pick up milk for us. And it was time for us to meet them to get our milk. So when they both called us at the same time and said, “Come get your stuff now,” we had to divide and conquer.

Andrew took an early lunch break and headed off in the car to get milk. I loaded the kids in the Beast and went a few miles down the road to the horse barn. The kids sat in the car and listened to books on tape while I loaded our co-op order into the back of the van. As I was writing a check to pay, there was a loud pop from the van and then smoke began pouring out from under it.

I rushed over and yanked the key out of the ignition. Smoke continued to pour out from under the driver’s seat. I wasn’t sure if we were dealing with smoke or steam, but I felt a sudden motherly inclination to remove my kids from the van. I yelled for help and then ordered the kids out of their seats. Ellen began screaming, Mira was already wailing, and the others had a million questions I couldn’t answer. Heart pounding, I threw all the kids out of the van (and Mira into a total stranger’s arms, which she didn’t appreciate).

Keep in mind, only one of my children was actually wearing shoes. Since we were just making a “quick trip,” I didn’t feel the need to make sure they were properly shod.

So there we stood, on the hot gravel in the middle of a horse barn. And everyone was barefoot.

Yes, we can take a moment for a collective, “Ick.”

I moved the kids to the porch outside the barn and threw some strawberries at them. (Thank goodness I’d been picking up food. It was lunchtime.) My friend kept an eye on my kids and was probably secretly amused at the drama enfolding while I placed a frantic call to Andrew, who was in his own sort of crisis because I had the checkbook with me and he needed to pay for milk. So he’d driven a bit farther to get cash, only to discover that a particular account was almost empty. And he was almost out of gas.

So when I called to say the van was blowing up, my timing could have been better.

By the time Andrew made it to us, his car was running on fumes. But it was loaded with milk. So he would turn it on for a bit to cool the milk and then turn it off to conserve his fumes. Meanwhile, he was crawling under the van, looking under the hood, and generally muttering to himself. The “steam” had stopped pouring out from the van, but as it sat with the engine off, it made a clicking sound.

We loaded everyone up and carefully drove the three miles back to our house. It was then determined that the rear air conditioner wasn’t cooling very well. (We just had the front air conditioner fixed last week.) When we arrived at home, we had milk and food to unload, kids to feed, and we needed to make a plan for the van.

I put Sam and Ian on lunch duty and asked Ellen to keep an eye on Mira. And then Andrew and I focused very hard on our deep breathing exercises and went to work. Andrew called the mechanic, who recognized our number (yep, we’ve talked a lot lately) and was genuinely sympathetic. The diagnosis over the phone wasn’t cheap.

Meanwhile, Sam and Ian made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. While Andrew was reporting to me the damage from the mechanic, Ian was slopping giant lobs of peanut butter onto sandwiches and, ultimately, the floor. After a particularly large splat hit the floor, Andrew glanced over in Ian’s direction. I saw the muscles in his face twitch. I grabbed his face in my hands and said, “It’s better if you don’t look. Just focus on my eyes.”

That garnered the first smile of the hour.

Thanks to our industrious boys, our kids ate a fairly decent semblance of lunch. The peanut butter sandwiches were nicely loaded. And I quite cheerfully cleaned the peanut butter up off the floor later, grateful that my boys were big enough and willing to help us out in a pinch.

Later in the day, I did burst into tears in the credit union when they asked for still more paperwork on a van that has yet to spend a full month in our driveway without breaking, but that’s another vortex for another time…

Filed Under: Family Stories, The Family Van
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The Beast Gets A Bandage And the Vitafam Gets Classier

July 5, 2011 by LoraLynn

Yesterday, we loaded the kids in the Beast and headed to Grampaw’s house. Shortly after we started down the road, we had to stop to fuel up. Andrew opened the sliding side door to the Beast to work on cleaning out our trash. (Confession: we’re unpacked and the laundry is done, but we haven’t really cleaned the van out from our recent trip to DC.)

Once Andrew was done cleaning, he tried to slam the door shut.

But it popped back open.

Again and again and again. For twenty minutes, Andrew slammed and re-slammed the door. The thing has never worked exactly right, but if you closed it just right and ninja-kicked it, you could shut it.

Until yesterday.

Buying a van sight-unseen is sort of like the Longest Blind Date Ever. There’s a new surprise around every corner and it’s usually not a pleasant sort of surprise.

I started to worry we’d have to turn around and head home with our half-open door, but eventually Andrew managed to get it jammed shut so that we couldn’t even open it back up to try and slam it again. So we figured we were safe for driving.

Once we arrived at Grampaw’s, someone managed to get the door un-jammed, but we were sort of at a loss for how to close it. Fortunately, there was lots of food to eat and fun to be had and nobody really wanted to think about it too hard. So we didn’t…

Until the thunderclouds poured over the horizon.

When Grampaw announced the arrival of a thunderstorm, Andrew threw his plate down on the table and headed out the front door for the van. The other menfolk followed close on his heels and they stood around in the beginning raindrops, slamming and re-slamming the door, pondering things like men do when they get in groups around a vehicle.

Twenty minutes later, they came back in, slightly damp but grinning. Andrew proudly showed me their handiwork.

That’s right: duct tape. Favored adhesive of rednecks everywhere.

We just keep getting classier and classier, don’t we?

The door is properly latched now, by the way. The actual front handle closes, but the back half of the door doesn’t snap in like it’s supposed to. So we’re safe to go down the road, not so good at staying dry. Without duct tape, of course.

Filed Under: Family Stories, The Family Van
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A Ramble And A Road Trip

June 26, 2011 by LoraLynn

I’m not gonna lie…

Andrew and I weren’t exactly thrilled to take a long road trip. We wanted to see our friends, but mercy, that’s a heckuva drive. However, the kids did great and the Beast made the trip much easier. It didn’t make the drive any shorter, but it helped the sanity. Plus, we had our white trash DVD player rigged up if needed:

The point of the trip was to return to Virginia where we used to live and meet up with our old friends. We also slipped in some “field trip” days. We even drove by our old house and discovered that it had been painted like I’d always wanted to do. But I’m pretty glad somebody else had to pay for it.

We mostly filled our days with People We Love. We had play dates and dinner dates with our friends and marveled at how well we had all managed to multiply.

This is one of my favorite pictures from the trip because these are my friends from days gone by loving on the babies I had after I moved away. It makes me cry every single time. Because it’s nice to have the sort of friends that still love the babies they’ve never met.

Speaking of friends, two very brave ones opened their home to us for the week and very kindly put all of our kids combined (which makes for 9 kids under 8) to bed all by themselves on Friday night. That is some serious LUVVVV, y’all.

Meanwhile, Andrew and I slipped away to reunion-ize with a very special small group we were a part of many years ago, before there were kids. We came from all over the country to meet up with our mentors, a decade after our first meeting.

(This is a shot of all the ladies and, characteristically, all you can see is my hair.)

We mingled and ate together and then we sat and stripped away the small talk. We shared the joys and the sorrows and, as one of the men put it, it was hard to tell where the sorrow stopped and the joy started because they all seem jumbled up together. We laughed. We cried. I won the prize for first tears of the night. Yay, me!

And then as we listened to Dr. E and his wife share wisdom with us, I so badly wanted to lay in the floor and just close my eyes so I could soak it all in.

And not because it was 1 am.

Because for awhile, I guess I’d been living life like I was underwater, breathing as best I could through a snorkel mask and then suddenly, in this sacred moment, here I was, up for air, taking in 100% oxygen, filling my lungs and feeling refreshed by the mere presence of Others Who Know.

And the One who brought us all together so many days ago.

Maybe that analogy is ridiculous, but it’s the truth. I had no idea I’d been underwater, really. Didn’t know how badly I needed this night with these people. Andrew and I were both surprised by the bittersweetness of what the last decade has brought and yet how sweet it was just to be with each other. To remember someone else’s history. To remember what we were like before we all became parental units and quit finishing our sentences.

If I were a better blogger, I’d end the post right there and leave you all to wonder what the heck I’m talking about… but I can’t. Because our little trip didn’t end with this night. There was another picnic, followed by lots of driving, and then another pitstop. Where we got to experience one of the prettier sides of the internet, which is blog-stalkers-turned-friends who make cupcakes. And who love my babies enough to feed them pb & j’s at 9 pm and let us rest our road weary eyes for an hour or two in their space.

And then there’s just the sense of togetherness we had on the road together as a family. I’m not saying there wasn’t screaming and angst for hours on end sometimes, but we honestly didn’t come home liking each other any less. Or taking ourselves any more seriously.

My point is (and I do have one) that we took this trip expecting to return exhausted. Which wasn’t wrong. We are, indeed, exhausted.

But we are also overwhelmed by the people who made the effort to hug our necks, refreshed by the blessing of Friends with History, and we’re honestly rejuvenated by all the family togetherness, no matter how exhausting it was.

And I think that’s about the best thing one could ever hope to gain from a road trip.

Besides cupcakes.

And we scored some of those, too…

Filed Under: Family Pictures, Family Stories, The Family Van, Vitafam On Vacation
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