Swag Wag

This past Friday we said goodbye to our Infiniti SUV and hello to a brand new... wait for it... MINIVAN! Now I would be lying if I said giving up our SUV was easy. It was a little emotionally difficult because that was "our first child" vehicle. It was a chapter in our life that is almost over.

Buying a van is symbolic, I suppose. We don't go out to clubs and restaurants on the weekend (very often), so we don't need something sleek and slim to drive down M Street without worrying what or whom we will hit. We live far enough away from the city that gas mileage actually does matter since we don't take the metro everywhere. Our lives are different than we were when we first got married, and thank God for that. Cue the Parent Rap. Our car is a reflection of that, but it's not our identity, which is something that people seem to be a little confused about.

Since buying the van, we've gotten a few remarks that make me question, not our decision in buying it, but how others identify what they drive with themselves. Having moved to Europe and back several times as a kid, my family owned a lot of cars. We owned everything from a VW bug (the O.G. as I like to think of it), to a Mercedes. No big deal. We bought cars that made sense for our family. Driving a bug didn't make us hippies (we weren't that cool) nor did driving a Mercedes make us trendy (we weren't that cool). A car is a car, and I guess I've always felt that way; it's not a reflection of who you are, but maybe where you are in your life.

Let me tell you about this van. This Saturday, Ryan and I went tailgating at FedEx field for the JMU vs. WVU game. In our van, we were able to pack up an enormous cooler, two chairs, a card table, a Bose speaker, three bags of food, and a Weber grill. And we listened to Shade on XM radio en route. We had my waters cooling in the built in chill box up front. We talked on the phone via Bluetooth and listened to songs from my iPod, courtesy of the USB cord. When we arrived, I plugged in our Bose speaker (there are two outlets) and could've watched a movie on the DVD player had the mood struck. This car is awesome.

The best part about the van? Henry LOVES it. As in, it's a fight getting him out of it.

Someone asked us, though, "How much room do you really need? Why not just get a big SUV?". Dummy. We will have two children in a matter of weeks. We have a dog that weighs 94 pounds. We go on vacations to Ohio and South Carolina about three times a year, not to mention our beach trips. Have you ever taken a vacation with an infant? Do you know how much stuff they need? Plus, I live in an area where driving 15 miles can mean 20 minutes or it can mean 1 hour. I will be damned if I squeeze my family into another SUV with terrible gas mileage because I'm too proud to be in a minivan. F that noise.

Ryan and I are still the same people. I have not started wearing mom jeans (although the number of college girls wearing cut-off mom jeans is disturbing). Ryan has not started wearing Tevas. We do not cruise yard sales on weekends and... whatever else nerdy middle-aged people do. We don't do that. So this is my chapter. I'm totally owning it. I am a proud owner of a minivan. His name is Lionel.

Cue the Swagger Wagon video.