Buh-bye, BDM!

Thanks for the miles, BDM!

We bought our navy blue 2010 Honda Odyssey minivan (known in my head as the Big Dumb Minivan) in late August 2009, when Amy was 4 and Reed was almost 6. It was fairly good to us over the next nearly 9 years and 113K miles, and certainly rode us around in comfort with lots of space, but lately its issues with burning off oil had become untenable so this week we made a switch. We bought a silver Hyundai Santa Fe (cue the "Santa Fe" song from Newsies, which Amy has recently been obsessed with [the play, not just the song, that is]) that's a bit smaller than the minivan was, which comes with a lot of the electronic bells and whistles that we never had before.

It was a little like saying goodbye to an old friend to sell the Odyssey. Amy was a bit emotional over it too. She came out to sit in it one last time before we sold it, and lingered a long time. I'd turned it on to make sure there were no more CDs in it and Bon Jovi's "Never Say Goodbye" was on the radio. I didn't even notice, but she said "Well this is a fitting song." Indeed.

For me, I guess mostly it just that the van safely carried our family so many places over nine years, it's sort of like part of the family. But also I had a little extra sadness that my Mom rode in the van at least once, maybe more...so that's just one more connection between us that's lost forever. A little silly, I know. But it still made me sad. I hope the van gets fixed up and carries around another happy family for years to come.

I hope we'll get lots of good years from the Santa Fe...facing its first real test this week with a 5-day vacation to Wrightsville Beach in North Carolina for a big family vacation. Here's hoping we are able to fit all of our junk in it!

Be good to us, Santa Fe!