We Found It!

Last night, we drove a little over an hour and brought home our van!!  (our last three cars have been purchased out of town - apparently our area doesn't have great deals)

Ain't she pretty?  :)  It's a 2006 Toyota Sienna.  And it only has 35k miles - only one previous owner and a local trade.

After looking for about a month or so, I was starting to wonder if we were looking for a van that didn't exist.  I mean, we didn't require too much.  We wanted low miles (preferably below 40k), the capability to seat 8 (Honda and Toyota vans can do this but not all of them), and be able to pay cash.

The older Sienna vans that seated 8 had a larger middle seat and five total sets of LATCH for children's seats.  (the newer ones had a much smaller 8th seat and only three sets of LATCH...not sure whose bright idea that was)  I knew with the older vans and larger 8th seat, I could fit three carseats in the second row - and I really liked that idea.  But almost every Sienna we found that was older either didn't seat 8 or had a TON of miles.  

Ri loves it - even though it's not blue and doesn't have a TV :)

But then I inquired about a Sienna at a dealership just below Charlotte, NC.  It was a 2006 and had about 75k miles - more miles than we wanted but I asked for more information anyway.  Turns out, that van was being serviced (cleaned up and such) and the sales guy couldn't get to it.  But he sent me information on another 2006 Sienna they had with only 33k miles.  On their website, the description said it only seated 7 and there weren't any pictures posted yet.  But when I opened my email, I noticed from the pictures he sent that it did, in fact, seat 8!  

I kept in touch with the sales guy over the next day, asking as many questions as I could.  He sent me a video of the van since we couldn't just pop over to the dealership.  Septtro didn't really like that it didn't have power sliding doors.  I initially wanted those too.  But in the older vans, we were finding the ones with power doors either just had one power door or they had higher milage or a higher price (because only the higher models came standard with them then).  So we decided lower milage was more important.  And I'm ok with that.  I know I would have loved power sliding doors.  But I've been opening and closing doors so far already and I'll need to buckle kids in anyway.  Plus pretty soon, I'm thinking Ri will be able to close them - they're not that heavy.

We were actually the first people to see the van.  They hadn't even had a chance to completely detail it yet - so they gave us a "we owe" included in our contract that a company they use who has multiple locations would do the detailing here so we wouldn't have to drive back up.

They didn't come down a whole lot on the price.  But they did come down.  And I told Septtro while we were there that it really was a good price for what we were getting.  Plus, since we were the first people to look at it, I was pretty certain they weren't going to be willing to negotiate a ton. 

I'm SO excited to have this van.  Even though it's just a 2006 and a basic model, there are many convenience features I didn't have in my previous car.  Sure, we didn't get leather or a dvd player or power sliding doors.  But instead, we saved thousands of dollars by getting an older van with low miles.  And, it seems because of the year of the van, our insurance costs may actually go down a little bit too (the Corolla we sold was a 2008)!!

We are very thankful to the Lord for leading us to this vehicle - especially since I sort of found it by accident.  It was clear this was the van for us.  :)

So now, Septtro is out for the summer.  Time to enjoy lots of play time together with these lil cuties!  No more van shopping - woooooo hooooo!!!

my lil jumping bean