New Car Smell

Don't you just that new blog smell. Well this is my first post in my new writing venture. It's been a while since I wrote anything so I'm getting the kinks out of my fingers as I type. The purpose of this blog is to chronicle my life with my family, our adventure, trials and tribulations. I hope it will be amusing, funny at times and always paint an honest picture of what is going on in our lives. I also hope the blog will inspire me to explore the world around me. The difference between now and when we were in Okinawa is that everything is farther away and packing up three kids is quite a task. I always considered myself a get up and go kind of girl. I don't put make up on or blow dry my hair ever. However, the addition of twin girls to our family has made getting up and going impossible. There are babies to feed, diapers to change, outfits to get on, diaper bags to load and car seats to strap into before we can even think of leaving the house. I will not be saying, "come on lets hop in the car", everything must be planned out and checklists followed in order to ensure we have every bit of support gear necessary to make the trip. Even short trips require what seems like a trunk full of stuff. There is no such thing as traveling light with twins. Because of this we bought a van. It's great, so roomy, a place for everything and if lets say we want to have 16 drinks all at once, there will be a cup holder for each. Gabriella gets her own seat and she is happy to no longer be squished between two car seats. This particular model has 2 DVD players, which apparently can play 2 separate DVDs at the same time. Since I have only one child that is facing the players I haven't really had a need to try out the dual DVD mode yet. The van has a lot of bells and whistles most of which I haven't even discovered yet. The one I have discovered and adore is the automatic sliding doors and trunk feature. When you are lugging what feels like a 100 pound car seat full of squirming baby to the car the last thing you want to do is have to pull open a sliding door, this feature means you don't have to. I imagine on a hot day it will be nice to be able to open all the doors and the trunk hatch to air out the car faster. It's been a real blessing with Gabriella as well. She can get in and put on her seatbelt while I'm still struggling to pull a car seat out the front door. It has plenty of room for groceries, strollers and Christmas presents. We haven't even driven it a 1000 miles and it has already hauled home two cribs, a giant stash of groceries and all our Christmas booty. I can't say I ever really pictured myself driving a mini van, but now experiencing how convenient it is, how it makes life a little easier, I'm proud to call myself a minivan mommy. Of course it would have been fitting to put a picture of the minivan with this post, but I don't have one yet.