Kids, school and a Van

Since the topics are so different I wanted to blog about this seperately.

My oldest child starts school this year! The big Kindergarden girl. I'm worried sick and nervous which confuses me since she attended pre-school for a year. I should be used to her leaving in the morning and returning in the afternoon but I'm not. Perhaps it is due to the fact that this school is VERY different from her pre-school.

We have placed her into a private catholic school in the city. The school has a great reputation for excellence (which is why we placed her there) and values. The only problem is my daughter is VERY stubborn and independant. She's began to push the boundaries here at home and I really worry she will be that one problem child in her class.

We went to her Kindergarden orientation and I sat worried as the teacher explained she is very strict and the children will probably come home and complain that entire first week because of it. She told us that she starts out hard and stays that way or the children will walk all over her and the class. She then explained the "fish" that each child has and how they are taken for each infraction. Basically there are cardboard fishes that each child has in their number slot. For each time they get into trouble a fish is taken. The fish are colored: Green then Yellow then Red then Black. Black means a trip to the office to call home...I have a sinking fear she will reach black within the first week alone...perhaps the first day.

Then my 4 year old son with high functioning autism starts his school the very next week full time. I'm very very nervous about this. He will go in at 8am and get out at 3pm. This is a long day for a 4 year old and I don't know how well he will take the change.

These two things bring me to an important issue. Jimbo and I got out last weekend and made a very very important purchase. We bought a minivan. We'd argued for a time over getting an SUV over a van. Jimbo doesn't like minivans at all. He pushed hard to get an SUV and I shopped around for one. Too bad the prices alone were out of our budget but the gas mileage was just crazy. So he caved and we began the search.

The first weekend we went was a bust. We found a Dodge Caravan that we liked with low mileage but it had a "thump thump" when you hit 50 and the dealer wouldn't fix it so we moved on. On the way home we drove by a place and I saw some vans and we almost didn't turn around as we were tired and wanted to get home. Good thing we stopped. For sale was a very nice and small Mazda minivan. It caught my eye immediately since it didn't "look" like other vans we'd shopped and when I looked inside I was in love. Leather interior, sliding seats, and more than enough room for our children (plus the side windows roll down, the back seats fold to make more room and did I mention it is smaller?). The mileage was a bit higher than the 100k I'd wanted but not so much that we didn't inquire inside. The dealer was closing but told us to come back Monday and gave us a card.

We came back Monday and got to take a look inside and take the van for a test drive. We drove it to my fathers shop and put it on the rack. All looked great and for the price (this MPV was priced thousands of dollars LESS than all the others for sale that didn't have leather interior) we just couldn't pass it up, so we went inside and made the deal and now she sits pretty in our driveway.

Luckily we just paid off our Toyota Camry and have decided to keep her as well since she only has 85k miles and is a wonderful car. Jimbo bought her for me for my birthday 4 years ago.

So I am now an offical minivan Mom and have the car pictured above to prove it! Now to prepare for sitting in the long pick up lines at school!!