Our Van

The day before we left for Disney World, we had an accident. It was just Jason, Jaxon, and me in the van. Thankfully, we were all okay, though Jason's chest was hit by the steering wheel and he was very sore for a few days. I hit my leg and it was sore for a few days as well. Jaxon was safe in his car seat and cried when we hit but I think that was mostly in response to my reaction (I was sitting next to him and gasped). 

We were in a construction zone on the interstate trying to merge into oncoming traffic. The truck (a huge Best Buy delivery truck) went to merge, and so did we, but then they slammed their brakes on and we rammed right into the back of them. Hard. 

This is what it looked like:

Ouch.

I thought it looked worse when the truck moved and you could see the damage.

Our first thought was that our Disney trip was over before it had even started. The accident happened late in the afternoon -we were scheduled to leave the next day. Our van was definitely not driveable. We waited for the tow truck and then waited for a ride home.

We tried to rent a van, but since it was a weekend, we had some trouble. We drove an hour to a rental location that was open on Sundays. But when we got there, they wanted a copy of a utility bill (they had not told us that on the phone). Who knew? Apparently, they want to be sure you live where you say you live so that they are able to come to your house and get the car in case you don't return it. We didn't have a bill with us and didn't have time to get back home to get one and get back to the city where the rental place was, so we had to skip that. 

Thankfully, my husband's parents have a minivan that they loaned us so we were able to make our Disney trip after all (more on that in later posts). 

While we were at Disney this past week, we got the call from the insurance adjuster. <Side note: we use Geico and they have been really great through this whole process.> Anyway, so the adjuster told us that our van is totaled. They are sending us a check in the mail. Thankfully, they were fair with their price. My brother (who works for Honda) said I wouldn't want a rebuilt van, because anytime something has been damaged that much it's never the same once it's been fixed. But I am still sad. I think it will be hard to find a used replacement that's as nice as what we had before. On the plus side, the van had over 120K on it, so we might can get something with lower mileage. 

So now we are car shopping. I would like a Honda since that's what we had before and loved. But Hondas have pretty good resell value so it may not be in our price range, not to mention all the ones I have found so far are in terrible colors. The catch here is that we have to get something pretty quickly because right now we can't all go anywhere together without borrowing a car because we can't fit the 6 of us in our other car.  

If you have a minivan, what kind do you have and what do you like (or not like) about it?