Hellobee

I remember making fun of soccer moms as a teenager. To be honest, I’m not really sure why. I’m not even completely sure what I thought a ‘soccer mom’ was, but I know that they wore mom jeans and drove their kids around in minivans. So I guess if you really look deep, I thought that soccer moms were women who had lost all sense of self and any semblance of style. And the dreaded minivan was a huge symbol of that loss of connection to the rest of the world.

Well, fast forward a few years. Now I am a work at home mom living in the suburbs. I don’t wear mom jeans, but these days I am rocking the maternity jeans in my 8 month pregnant body so I’m not exactly a beacon of style. And yep, we recently bought a minivan  With a preschooler, a toddler, and a baby on the way, our beloved Toyota 4Runner just wasn’t going to cut it anymore.

When we started talking about getting a new car, my husband and I talked a lot about larger SUVs with three rows of seating so we could fit three car seats. We kept trying to convince ourselves that a nice big SUV would be a great solution, but while we could have definitely made it work, it just wasn’t the best solution. 0So we broke down and got a used Honda Odyssey.  And I am so, so glad that we did.

Baby #3 won’t be here for a few more weeks, but I have already fully embraced being a minivan driver. Sure, I still recognize it is far from the coolest car on the road, but there are just so many positives, I can let that slide. Plus, I’m 35 years old – while I may not have given up my entire identity to be a faceless soccer mom, I have pretty much given up on caring whether anyone else thinks I’m cool or not. Thank goodness.

Reasons I’m Embracing the Minivan

• Automatic sliding doors. Such a simple thing but so, so nice when you have littles. I don’t have to worry about my four year old opening the car door in a parking lot and banging it into the car beside us. And as we are all piling out of the house to get in the car, I can click the door open and the boys can get themselves in before I even get to the van. So helpful.
• Tons of cargo space. I knew vans were big obviously. But some days our minivan feels like Mary Poppins’ purse – it just holds so much more stuff than you would think. I love that it can seat up to eight or you can remove some or all of the back seats to have more cargo room. Recently I bought a huge dining table with six chairs.  I folded down the third row, removed all of the second row seats, and there was room to haul the table and chairs home with plenty of space to spare. So handy.
• Lots of possible seat configurations. With little one #3 on his way very soon, we already have the infant car seat strapped in the minivan  At first I was planning to put the 2-year-old and the infant in the second row captain seats and the 4-year-old in the third row. But the problem with this is the 4-year-old is still in a 5 point harness and I didn’t really want to be crawling between two car seats to buckle him in everyday. Luckily, I saw a thread in the boards here at Hellobee where several moms recommended putting two car seats in the back row and one in the second row.  We ended up putting the infant seat in the second row behind the driver. Then we put the two convertible car seats in the third row and removed the rest of the second row for easy access to get everyone in and out. So far it has been awesome. And it just reinforces that we made a good decision not trying to force our family into a large SUV.
• Basically all of the features were designed with a large family in mind. The minivan we bought is a 2010, so it certainly isn’t brand new. And I’m sure there are probably way better features available now. But you can just tell that everything was put together with minivan-driving moms and dads in mind. From extra mirrors to see the kids in the back to lots and lots of cup holders and storage spots. It’s awesome.
• So comfy. Because there is just so much room everywhere from the front seat to the trunk, it is super comfortable to ride in.
• Awesome for road trips. We love to travel and for us, especially as we keep adding to our family, that typically means road trips. Whether it’s a day trip to a local lake or a multi-state road trip to visit eight national parks, we love to get away and explore. And our minivan is kind of perfect for road tripping. There’s tons of room for all of the baby and kid gear we need to haul along. And just as importantly, there’s plenty of room for the kids to be seated far enough away from each other that nobody can touch anybody else. Super important. And while the gas mileage isn’t the best, it also isn’t really any worse than our old SUV, so no loss there.

Of course there are some downsides to the minivan as well. We can’t go off-road like we could with our 4Runner. But in reality, we only kicked it into four wheel drive a dozen or so times over the entire eight years we had our SUV. So no big loss.

And cruising around town in a minivan makes it pretty clear at a glance that yes, we are parents living that exciting mom and dad life. But since that is in fact reality, I can deal with it.

Any other minivan lovers out there? Or would you rather drive just about any other vehicle on the face of the earth?