I Will Never Be A Van Mom

I have no intention of offending anyone with this post.
Simply stated I just have never liked vans - I always said that I would never be that Mom that drives a van. Funny how things that I have said always come full circle.

So it has been very apparent that our family needs a larger vehicle with more space. By the time you stick two boys in two car seats, wheelchair in the back, special tomato chair (that we use for eating so that Bryce can sit at the same table as the rest of us) and of course our backpack.... There isn't much room left over. We could NEVER take Bryce's wheelchair and his walker in the same vehicle. Going to visit our parents was equivalent to packing for a weekend trip and trying to jam everything into once space. The wheelchair alone is very heavy and trying to fit it in the back of the Escape is like fitting a puzzle piece into a puzzle. It had to be put in exactly right in order to fit.

Here enters the van search.
Did I mention that I don't like vans?

So we had looked at various models online and I decided that (out of all of them) I could maybe like the Toyota Sienna. I had read they would be easy to adapt so that if we need a ramp down the road, we could easily add one.

We went to Dry Ridge Toyota to look around and see what they had. It was very obvious (with Bryce in his wheelchair) that we were looking at the vans and would be interested in the handicap accessibility of them. The man helping us led us inside to the showroom and showed us a van they had on demo. We had no idea but just this year Toyota came out with a Sienna with a "Auto Access Seat." See the link below for a video.

http://www.autoevolution.com/toyota-blog/2013-toyota-sienna-gains-auto-access-seat-video-59580.html


I honestly can't believe that this is the first time something like this has been created for a vehicle. I know a lot of people that could benefit from such a feature so I wanted to share with you. We will pick up our van this weekend.

Even though it was pretty upsetting walking onto the new car lot and over to the van section - I am actually excited about this! This van had all but our name engraved on the side of it. I have a few more days of living on the edge before I become an official member of the Van Mom Club.