Introducing "Theo"

Short for Theodoros, meaning Gift from God. It's greek - which the van is an Oddyssey, and it was a gift from God, so I think it's perfect. 

Here are the pics:

It has seat warmers, a navigation system, a DVD player (and you can hook up your wii to it too), and 6 disc CD changer. The middle windows roll down (Elijah was so excited for that), it has a sun/moon roof, Lazy Suzanne storage between the first and second row, an additional glove compartment, and a place to hold my water bottle in my door. 

We love it!

And the hunt is on!

So a few weeks ago, on Friday the thirteenth as Elijah likes to point out, when I was coming home from dropping off Quianna at school our van was hit by a transit bus. Yup, I was hit by a bus.

Let me see if I can explain this clearly. I was going west on 37th ave. It was icy out so I wanted to make sure I had plenty of time to slow down and stop if the light I was approaching turned yellow. I kept my eye on that light and it stayed green. As I was coming closer the green signal light that was also on in the lane beside me turned from a green arrow to a green circle. I double checked my light and saw it was still green. Then I saw across the intersection a bus facing east and stopped in the turning lane. This was all happening while I was going 30ish miles per hour. As I was just about to go trough the intersection, I saw the bus pull forward, but I thought he was just pulling forward so he could get in the intersection before turning after I went through. As I was about half way through he intersection, he turned left - right into my driver's door! Talk about creepy! I saw a bus coming at me and I couldn't do anything about it. I felt/heard the crunch and felt our van being pushed into another lane. Jed was right behind me covered with a blanket in his carseat. He thankfully slept through the whole thing. I know angels were watching over him because the blanket was securely over the whole carseat so glass didn't cut him and he was perfectly safe!

ok... so I wrote that first part a few weeks ago. Since then - lots have happened and I need to update (that's usually what my blog posts are about).
Here are the pictures of the van. Yes it was totaled.

My window was completely shattered! Notice the side mirror missing? 

There it is! Yup, it flew  across the van. I'm so lucky I didn't get hit by it.  

So, the van was totaled and we ended up getting more money than what we paid. I love getting good deals for vehicles when we buy them. We had a rental van for a couple of weeks while things were getting settled with the insurance and such. We looked and looked and couldn't find another honda in our price range. Finally, on our way (or I guess, out of our way) to the Tri-Cities, we went to Wenatchee to go look at 3 vans. We liked all of them, unfortunately the dealership didn't want to play ball with the price. They pretty much laughed in our faces, and when they wanted to charge us top dollar for the oldest one, we just left town. That usually is not our experience. Yes, we offer them a ridiculous offer, but then we always start the negotiations from there. My dad said it's because they are a small town dealer with very little competition. 

We spent our vacation in the Tri-Cities looking for another van. Brian did his usual daily 1-1 1/2 hour search on craigslist and dealers from Missoula to Seattle. We almost went over to Auburn on New Years day, but we called the day before and found out they would be closed. I'm very surprised that we made it home from Christmas in the Subaru with all our stuff. Brian is a wiz at packing. Car top carriers help too.

Last week we kept up with the usual searches and found a van in Priest River, Id. They were a very nice family who actually just came from Thailand. They were there for a few years because "God told them to." I put that phrase in quotes, because we heard it a lot. She even said that's why they put it on Craigslist because she felt that God was telling her. She just knew that a family needed it. The van was in great condition and they kept trying to make sure everything was perfect for us (cleaning the tires and windows, changing a light bulb, etc). The van has a DVD system, a 6 disc changer, leather heated seats, back up camera, and navigational system! It's a 2005, which Brian and I had been looking for because we like the newer body style and feel like the sliding doors were better manufactured. 

We ended up buying it - including the set of snow tires that were on it! We love the van and Brian wants to call it "TightyWhitie" because it's tight and it's white. I'm going to come up with a better name. Maybe Hercules - because Carrie's 2014 Honda odyssey is called Zeus. I think it needs a Greek name since it is an odyssey, but I think I might find a name that means "gift from God" because we really feel like this family that sold us the van was an answer to our prayers.