It's Official...

I am a minivan mom from here on out! Now I just need to enroll my kids in soccer or something...right? ;)

I wanted to share the story of how we came to purchase our minivan. It's probably not the most exciting story (to me it is!) but it has been another testimony builder in my life of just how much Heavenly Father loves and cares for me and answers my prayers. I usually don't talk too much about spiritual things but it's my blog and I want to share this. :)

After selling our Toyota, I have been online constantly looking at sites for used minivans. We have been setting aside as much money as we could every month, ever since we found out we were having twins and knew we needed a much bigger vehicle to buckle all the kids in. I mean, we could tie them to the rack on top of our car, but we would surely get arrested for that! ;) So with our savings and the money from selling our Toyota we had a decent amount to purchase a van. Yet, after just five days of looking at used minivans online, I decided that we should just wait a bit longer to buy one and save even more so we could get a better quality minivan.

So Wednesday morning I was going to give up my search for awhile until we could save more money, but that morning I felt I should check one last time on a popular news site for Utah called, KSL.com. As I was checking it out, I saw this 2000 Honda Odyssey come up for sale just an hour earlier at a price that was in our grasps! It was seriously too good to be true! I have always loved Honda Odysseys but never thought we would ever be able to afford one. The price was almost 2,000 below blue book!

At first, I thought, "there must be something wrong with this van if he is selling it for so low..." But after talking with him on the phone countless times and having my uncle, Alma, who lives close to Salt Lake, offer to check it out for us, it turned out the van is in great shape. Again, I still felt a little discouraged, as I felt so far away from being able to get a chance to look at it myself before he possibly sold it to someone else. The man said he tried to sell it at or above blue book price a few months ago but it didn't sell and him and his wife just wanted to get rid of it, as they didn't want to pay insurance on it anymore. They already owned two other cars and their kids were all out of the house, so they didn't need a minivan. The man, Troy, told me that if I could get down to Salt Lake the next day somehow that he wouldn't sell it until I had a chance to look at it even though he had a dozen of calls on it so far. Talk about generous! He must have had pity on me for being pregnant with twins! haha! Just kidding.

So my next problem was, how am I going to get down to Salt Lake?? We only had one car and Ryan was in Sun Valley with it, at a Physician Assistant Conference. My mom offered to drive me down with the kids, but then I remembered that our good friends, Nate and Joanna were driving down from Caldwell Idaho to stay with us that night and would be driving to Salt Lake the next morning. It also turned out that Ryan's aunt, Wendy, who lives here in Pocatello, had the day off work Thursday and could watch the girls for me all day. How perfect! So I got to take a road trip with Nate and Joanna and their two sweet kids to Salt Lake the next morning. It also turned out that my uncle was off work and on a three week vacation so he was more than willing to drive me the 30 minutes or so to go look at the van. Nate and Joanna dropped me off at my aunt and uncles' house around noon on Thursday and my uncle and I headed out. As soon as I saw the van, it was love at first sight..haha. I test drove it and asked a hundred and one questions before handing over the check.

I drove the van all the way back home after having lunch with my uncle and it drove great. On the way home I was filled with so much gratitude. I am just so grateful for all the things the Lord has blessed me with and as I was laying in bed that night full of thankfulness, I was reading in the Doctrine and Covenants and came across this verse, (section 4:7) which I have heard many times: "Ask, and ye shall receive; knock, and it shall be opened unto you...' It really hit me that when we are obedient and doing the things the Lord has asked of us he will pour out his blessings to us. He wants to bless us, we just have to ask. I forget all too often sometimes and wish I wasn't so weak. I am grateful for this experience and many more like it that help humble me and remind me of what's really important in life. I am also grateful for everyone that helped me out; Wendy, Nate and Joanna and my Uncle Alma! Thank you!!!

Here's our minivan! We hope it will be a good van for us, for many years. Ryan and I both LOVE Hondas. They go forever and have been great cars for us as we have owned three Honda vehicles between the both of us, since we started dating almost 8 years ago.

I thought I would also show a picture of our trusty Toyota Tercel that we were very sad to see it go. It was a great car for us for those three years we had it!