Car Decisions

This is a farm story which simply must be told. I will preface this by saying that my husband is not actually a used car salesman although he has so much trouble making decisions about vehicles that he really could be. It all started with this surprise fourth pregnancy. Everything was fine with vehicles until we realized that we were going to need to squeeze a fourth car seat into my old 1994 Lexus Landcruiser. We studied all of our possible choices, which of course was limited to the fact that it needed to fit all of us plus all of our things for a family car trip. The obvious, practical answer of course was a minivan....but no...we are NOT the minivan type!
When it comes to searching for a new to us vehicle, my husband spends weeks staring at the computer doing as much research as possible. He can tell you when the model year had changes to almost every vehicle out there. I have to say this has increased my knowledge of vehicles. In fact I have even stumped a real used car salesman by knowing when certain changes occurred. Anyhow after weeks of research we realized the only thing that would work would be to give in and get a minivan...besides how cool are we really with four children?
So the research for which minivan began and it was a few more weeks before he settled on the right one for us...a 2009 Honda Oddysey. Then the day came for it to arrive and I was a little sad at the thought of letting go of my old car. Ben also was having second thoughts about his decision so we didn't list the Lexus for a while. I was just kind of playing with both of them deciding which I liked better, but the first payment was coming due on the minivan so the decision had to be made. The thing to know about both myself and Ben is that we are horrible about making decision. We are both so indecisive that it is almost a handicap. We generally ask our children to make the decision for us or wait until life does it for us, so that's what we did with this decision.
I went out one morning to hop in the minivan and be off to whatever appointment I had planned. I unlocked the minivan and stopped. I was completely shocked by what I saw...there was black stuff all over my seat, the floor...everywhere!! It stumped me for a moment, then I looked a little closer and recognized the culprit...chicken poop!! Suddenly a flash picture came into my mind about the sliding side door being left open by one of the boys the day before. I started looking for the culprit and there she was roosting on the third row seats. It was her, the really curious one that always sneaks out of the run and into my flowers and now into my new car. Apparently she hopped in before we closed and locked the car for the night. I came inside and told Ben that the decision had been made for us...we were selling the minivan!
 Since this story is from a year ago I need to update it just so you can all laugh at us some more. We cleaned the minivan, brought it to the dealership on consignment. We sold the Lexus and replaced it with a slightly newer Lexus that had a different seat configuration so that it would work with the four car seats. Then after the baby was born we realized that not one of the boys could be trusted to sit next to him without making him cry...so...we sold that Lexus and got a 2012 Honda Oddysey. Yup, now we have a minivan. We are all happy with it. I never ever let chickens into it....although I did bring two goats home from the Estes Fiber Festival in the back of it. The woman who was selling me the goats did give me some concerned looks when I said I was going to bring them home in the minivan. She said they might scream the whole way home. I smiled and said, "it couldn't be any worse than some of the drives I've had with one or more of my own children screaming the whole way".