Monday, April 28, 2008

This Is How We Roll~ The New Van Tour

Well MIL has left for a bit with D's Aunt. FIL did not come because he couldn't get off work so it's only her for 2 weeks but I'd much rather have him here for 2 honestly. LOL! So here's some pics of the new ride and I hope no one minds if I rave about it. If you have not seen the new Town and Country or Grand Caravans just go take a look. My van was only 4.5 yrs old but I feel like I had a piece of junk compared to this one. The past two days with my new ride have been something special. Oh I am so in love. My mom is so impressed I think she may go for a minivan next time. She kept gasping at every little feature when I took her for a ride.
This is the dual TVs. I say TV's instead of DVD since the kids can either watch SIRIUS Satalite TV or they can watch DVD's. I can put Mia and Damien in a Dora DVD and Alex and Dominic in a Spongebob DVD. It's crazy the kid friendly things they have came up with on these vans!! That little black thing up at the top with the white buttons is their remotes to control either TV from the back. It came with 2 sets of wireless headphones so I don't have to listen to their shows.
This is so the kids can plug in either plug and play games (one set for screen 1 and 2) or the Xbox, Playstation,etc. I'm afraid to show this feature off to the kids. lol They've seen it but don't know what it is.The screen shown there? That is my favorite part. You could call it Mission Control. lol! Basically it's a 20 Gig hard drive. It holds pictures from your camera, 2600 songs, and movies. You download it there and never have to carry anything on you. The screen folds down because there's a DVD player behind it. So there's 2 DVD players (you can see the one at the bottom of the picture) And then in park, that screen if you put in a DVD actually turns on as a TV and you can watch the movie with the kids. I about screamed when the dealer showed this off to me. LOL! It's also the back up camera screen. Another cool thing is the radio. I programmed it this morning but somehow it tells you the artist and song on REGULAR radio, tells you the Station name, tells you info on the station. Such as I was listening to KLOVE this morning and then it told me go to www.klove.com for more station info. You can click your genre and it will only scan those stations for you. It's incredible. I've had Sirius radio before but it's still nice to have it not on a little box like I did before and actually built into the car. Above the 2nd DVD player is the heaters and crap for the leather seats. I have no clue how any of that works yet.
This is a picture of the Stow and Go. We didn't do the Swivel with the table because we tried it with our 4 and they couldn't even reach the table. It's ideal for big kids. :( Kinda sad but Oh well. So we went ahead with the Stow and Go for extra storage. Since we have car seats on the 2 buckets, the seats will never be folded in the floor so because of that we have some crazy amounts of storage in the bottom in front of the 2nd row. It's about a foot and a half deep and all I've put in there so far is wipes and my huge diaper bag.
I took ths picture to show two of the kids favorite parts. First you can't tell in the day but around the top of the roof console you can see a darker shadow but in the dark of night the roof turns a soft neon blue. There's actually a blue light that goes all the way around that top console that is constantly on. It's not bright enough to keep a kid up but it sure is pretty. lol The other thing is the 4 built in shades. You can see one is up. Dominic and Alex love that because some days they get blinded and they hate that. Here's the back seat completely folded flat (I couldn't figure out how to undo that middle belt.)
And then here it is as a tailgate bench which will be awesome when we are backing up to the ball diamonds in the next month or so. The kids can watch and eat out the back since I usually pack a picnic for dinner at the fields.
Ok so drawbacks. The remote needs to be able to be locked. Maybe it can be, I have no idea yet. Mia keeps pushing buttons and I go outside to the garage to find the hatch up or doors wide open!! If she figures out the remote start I'm going to have a serious problem. Damien has found on the roof in the front, there are buttons to control the doors and hatch when I'm putting Mia in her chair. At first I thought the van was going haywire but then when I got smashed in the door (it has a sensor and opens when it touches you) I saw he was giggling and buy the cup holder console getting ready to hit another button. He knows there are push buttons on the inside of the doors for the kids to open and shut the back doors too and races back and forth before I get him locked in. Another small thing, I was so used to having cruise on my steering wheel that I'm having a hard time getting used to that. There's this other button too I keep accidentally pushing which moves the petals while I'm driving.

In all I am soooo impressed with our new van. I'm so goo goo over it. I have a one up on Mrs. BetterthanU now. lol We have 1 super nice vehicle and Dave's work truck which they pay for all the gas and he gets to use for whatever. Perk for being a manager. His mom said "you just had to get rid of my ride" when she got here. Yep. One day before she arrived actually. Hee hee hee! It's nice though because now we don't have to tag it (the are due!) or have to worry about hail, etc since it was outside. They gave us quite a bit because being a 2001 it only had 35K on it. It hadn't been drove in months.

9 comments:

Bird's Eye View Photography said...

Very nice! And I hate minivans... haha-- no really, I like the way that front end looks!

Jess said...

Wow, that looks fantastic Sabrina!!! My sister has a T&C but it isn't nearly that fancy inside.

Colleen said...

Just lovely! Everytime you get a new van you wonder what they will think of next!

Sara K. Parker said...

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOh. I am soooooooooo jealous. :) I can't believe all that STUFF!

Sara

Kristi Ann said...

LOL...we have the SAME van!!!

Except mine is white, and only has 1 DVD player/t.v.

LOVE it!!! I'm jealous...I like your color better! LOL

Unknown said...

Love it!!! If I were a minivan person I would buy that one!!

Jennifer said...

Nice ride! I can't wait until we can all fit into a mini van again. I miss the days of being able to fill up for under $100!

hollibobolli said...

It looks awesome!! I'm telling you.. once you get a lot of space in the car, you can never go back to tiny!!

Anonymous said...

Man, that thing is SWEET. Congratulations!