getting ready...

We made a big purchase last week and furthered our getting ready for Baby B3 to arrive - a 2005 silver Honda Odyssey! (sorry for the poor garage pic, but it is too cold out to get a nice picture outside!)
Those of you who know us know that this was a long long process involving:

• us figuring out what vehicles we could fit 3 car seats in
• test driving and narrowing down our list
• us getting over our complete aversion to mini-vans (not that we have any problem with them, but just couldn't see us driving one - they are so big!)
  
• figuring out our budget and what year/mileage vehicles fit into that
  
• looking at what is available (much time spent every day online looking at Car Soup, cars.com, craigslist, etc.)
• finding a good Mazda MPV only to have it sold before we got there due to us being on vacation
• filling out spreadsheets (oh yes, spreadsheets - we are official math nerds) and crunching numbers on $$ per year it would cost us for each vehicle, or which one was better fit for the criteria that we were looking at
• finding an almost scary cheap 2005 Honda Odyssey with 38,000 miles on it on Car Soup from a small dealer that we didn't recognize (a year newer and at least 10-20,000 miles less than we had been looking at)
• deciding to take a look at it anyway on a Friday evening that we were in the dealer's area anyway
• being pleasantly surprised that it was a very decent car, with a clean CarFax and maintenance record
• also being pleasantly surprised when the dealer told us how he does business - makes $300-$500 on each car they buy at auction, no more (they sell 150+ cars a month too!).
• agonizing for an evening over the van and whether we really wanted it and wanted to go for it and if it was the best car and price and value for us
• going to look at it the next day(Saturday) in the light without kids (thanks, J&C!!!) being fairly serious about it if we could get an inspection on it on Monday
  
• having the car battery die on us on our test drive (red flag?????)
• having the dealer tell us he had another couple coming to look at it for the 2nd time right after us, and a wholesaler coming Monday morning, so if it made it past both of them (yeah right) we could take it for an inspection.
• having to agonize over lunch on whether or not we should just go for it - that is an unB thing to do!
  
• deciding yes we would take it!!!!! (5 minutes before the other couple came in ready to buy it - they were not happy =)
• not being able to drive it off the lot as we did not have financing ready and also they would put a new car battery in for us.
• going back the next Tuesday and getting to take it...to the Honda dealer for the inspection we still wanted to have
• and finally bringing it home on Wednesday after a stop at Midas because the Honda inspection was great except for the rear brakes (Honda dealer said they would certify it otherwise, which made us feel good)
• now still getting used to driving a bigger vehicle and a mini-van and never remembering where I have parked in parking lots and forgetting which car I am looking for!
• being very happy with our purchase and extremely blessed that it all went well (had a Bible study the next day on how the Lord is sovereign over everything in our lives, even the everyday buy a car things!)

And now the van needs a name too! Please put in your suggestions! (BTW, we are going to sell our green '98 Honda Accord, and keep our '02 Mazda Protege named Wilson.)