Minivans

I had never thought that I, the tiny cars lover, fan of the Mini Cooper, would find myself driving a minivan (even though they both might have the word 'mini' in their name), not to mention owning one. Back in Israel, minivans are usually owned by families with multiple kids usually not living in big cities, since finding a place to park this thing is pretty tough. Even when we came to the U.S and parking was no longer a big issue (well, only when we visit Manhattan or if I happen to arrive after 9:30 to work...) I still didn't see any reason I should get a minivan and was really happy with our nice looking SUV. But traveling with two kids and sometimes a dog too, a stroller, some bags, games, books, portable DVD player and food supply (one should always have food handy when traveling with kids, even on short trips), we realized that after getting all that into our SUV we could barely spare some space to stretch out our feet. Yet our friends with the minivans seemed to be having a great time on long trips and had plenty of room to sit and even to some extent walk around! Could that be the end of my cool cars phase? Well, I guess many things change once you have kids, including some of your preferences and your views, minivans all of a sudden didn't look like a big balky car anymore, and my kids were really pushing for a car like most of their friends have, for them at this specific phase in their life, a minivan seem much more attractive than say a BMW, go figure. So now, I am proud to say that I am a happy owner of a minivan. A car that was tailored for families, everything you need is just there. I no longer have to squeeze my feet between bags, I can open the side doors with my remote and let the kids in before I even get to the car, our total time to get everything in and have my kids buckled up in their seats is now reduced from 5-10 minutes to less than 1 minute (pretty significant when the weather is bad, and that is unfortunately not rare around here), we can take friends along without exceeding the passengers limit and still have enough space in the car! And most importantly, our minivan comes fully loaded with an LCD screen, a remote control and two sets of cordless speakers, so the kids are busy watching movies instead of asking 'how long is this drive going to take?' or 'are we there yet?' before we even leave the parking lot. On the contrary, they now think that driving around is fun! Yes, even if you're not trying to get anywhere... And we can finally enjoy a quiet and relaxed drive, which adds a great safety factor.

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