Part one of the saga is here.

I've decided to put the big reveal at the start, so to see what kind of car we bought, watch this video of Kate seeing it for the first time. Dan brought it home after she was asleep, but we had told her there might be a new car in the driveway when she woke up in the morning. It was the first thing she asked about, as you can tell from the fact that she's still got her jammies on in this video.

Yes, after all of Dan's opposition and even after my brief love affair with a GMC Acadia, we bought a minivan. A Honda Odyssey, to be exact. No one is more surprised by this than me. After months of disagreement on the subject, I figured I should do my best to visualize our lives as SUV owners because I was certain Dan would never purchase a minivan. I really did like the Acadia. It was fun to drive and roomy, and Kate loved it. And in perhaps the shock of my life, after having argued for buying a minivan for months, I really didn't enjoy the Chrysler minivan we drove that week.No offense to Chrysler owners, because I loved the automatic doors and features, but I couldn't get comfortable driving it. It felt too big and I couldn't park it to save my life. I was ready to give the Acadia serious consideration and I told Dan so. But before we ruled the minivan out completely, I said I wanted to test drive the top two foreign-made minivans -- the Honda Odyssey and the Toyota Sienna. Dan agreed, and since we had a date night already scheduled with babysitting from Dan's mom, we headed out to the Honda dealership a few nights later.

I have seen my husband fall in love a few times. Once with me. Once with Kate. Once with Isaac. Once with a Nintendo Wii. And five minutes into that test drive, Dan was in love with the Honda Odyssey. I laughed at him until I drove it and then I couldn't laugh because I was too busy LOVING THAT MINIVAN. We intended to just do a quick test drive and ended up on the lot for over an hour talking with the salesman about options and prices. Well, OK, that's what Dan was doing. I was sitting in the back seat, lying down in the bucket seats and trying to figure out if Kate could possibly kick me in the back of the head from what would be her seat. (No? I'll take it!)

On the way off the lot, we walked up to the main dealership building and viewed the brand new, just-arrived 2011 Honda Odyssey. It was pretty, but we didn't have time to test drive it that night. Besides, when we were getting ready to car shop, one of the few things we could agree on was that we would definitely not be buying a brand new car. Used was the way we would be going, no questions asked, end of story. If you could see what the inside of our Saturn looked like after three years of kids riding around in it, you would understand our commitment to not starting out with anything nicer than we can keep up. It's just too heartbreaking when it ends up encrusted in goldfish cracker crumbs. But over the next week Dan kept mentioning going back to the dealership to drive the new Odyssey. The 2011 one. The one with a model year later than the calendar year that isn't even over yet.

Earlier in our marriage, this would have made me nervous. When we were newlyweds, I used to get all worked up over stuff that Dan said in passing, but that was before I realized an important fact about my husband -- he is a verbal processor. I am not. I still forget this some times, and chaos ensues. We'll get up on a Saturday morning and over breakfast, Dan will say "I think we should go to the zoo with the kids today. We could leave by 9:30 and be back by noon." And I'll say "OK!" Then I'll spend the next hour getting out picnic blankets and sunblock and strollers. As I'm getting ready to put the kids in the car, Dan will wander back into the room and say "So what are we going to do today?" And then my head explodes because what do you mean what are we going to do? We are going to the zoo. GET IN THE CAR. It's a moment that is totally my own fault, because I have forgotten that as a verbal processor, when Dan says "I think we should go to the zoo," it is because that thought just entered his mind for the first time ever. Maybe he doesn't even want to go to the zoo. Maybe he wants to go to the movies. If he's still saying he wants to go to the zoo an hour later, and I have gotten him to sign several documents stating his intentions to go to the zoo, then it's time to get out the backpack. Until then there are no plans, just a man talking.

As an internal processor I cause a different kind of problem, the kind where one day after weeks of thought and zero verbal expression, I announce over dinner "I am going to paint the dining room purple" and Dan chokes on his green beans trying to ask when we decided we were painting the dining room. Dan really gets the worse end of the deal in all this because whereas he knows he is just trying his thoughts on and can easily be talked out of them, I have invested in my thoughts in all the time I have been not sharing them. By the time it comes out of my mouth, I really think that painting the dining room purple is the right and holy thing to do. For the children. Try to talk that down.

The way this played out in the car buying scene is that when Dan started talking about wanting to drive the new Honda minivan, I immediately chalked it up to verbal processing and quit listening to him. After all, we had agreed in multiple previous conversations that we were in the market for a used car only. So I just said "Uh huh?" and "Mmm" while he looked at the new Odyssey online and read me interesting facts about it. When he started saying how it was really hard to find used Odysseys with low mileage and recent year models and maybe we should consider just buying a new one, I smiled and nodded. Because I am not taking the bait! That man is just talking! Nothing to see here. Move along.

Well. A week later when after arranging for a babysitter so that we could attend an event hosted by the church we are visiting, the event got canceled at the last minute. Since the babysitter was coming anyway, we decided we should still go out. The Honda dealership had emailed Dan that day to say that a used Odyssey that we might be interested in had arrived on the lot that day, so Dan said that we should swing by to take a look at it and maybe, just maybe, we would test drive the 2011 Odyssey while we were there. This was when I started to worry a little.

Twenty minutes later, we were test driving the new 2011 Honda Odyssey and it was awesome. Of course it was. They don't make newer models to achieve less awesomeness. They make newer models to achieve higher expensiveness, and let me tell you that they have definitely met that goal with the new Hondas. Yikes. The mere mention of the price tag was enough to send me straight to "How about that used one y'all called us about? Where is that?" But Dan was still talking to the salesman about the new one. Not in a casual way, either. In a way where suddenly it was nine o clock at night and the dealership was closing but the manager was out taking a look at our Nissan so they could tell us what they would give us for the trade-in if we drove a new one off the lot that night. That was the first time they left us alone together all night and I could hardly wait for the salesman to get out of earshot before I whipped around to Dan and whisper-screamed "What are you doing? We were going to buy a used car! Do we need to leave right now before you do something we're going to regret?"

Maybe if I had car shopped with Dan more I wouldn't have gotten so worried. Truth be told, we've bought one car together in the course of our marriage, and even that wasn't really a joint effort. In 2005 my lemon of a Chevy Malibu, in what can only be described as a merciful act of providence, was hit with hail damage twice within 24 hours and totaled. When the insurance company cut us a check, Dan did a ton of consumer research and narrowed it down to a few cars that would work for us. Then I gave him helpful suggestions about the things I care about. In that instance, I think my input was "I think silver cars are pretty." I never set foot on a car lot until it was time to pick up the silver Nissan Sentra we were buying.

In a calmer moment, I might have reflected a bit more and remembered that with no involvement from me, the car that Dan bought on that occasion was perfect for what we needed at the time. The Nissan got great gas mileage and never once broke down when I was driving it on the 45-minute daily commute I did every day for two years. I probably also would have remembered that Dan has never once in the course of our marriage made any decision, financial or otherwise, that was irresponsible. But I didn't reflect on any of that, and I freaked out. I do think the relentlessness of car salesmen was a factor. I felt like Dan and this salesman were playing a weird game of poker and I was supposed to be playing too, but I couldn't figure out if my hand was any good. Come to think of it, that is how I feel when I play real poker, which is probably why I don't play poker.

After my little meltdown, Dan assured me that he mostly wanted to go through the negotiation process and find out if they would give us a deal that would make a new model feasible. They made their best offer, we said we'd think about it and we walked away. We talked it over for a couple of days and ultimately decided we'd keep looking around for a used one, and within a few more days one showed up online at a dealership a half hour from where we live. Dan drove out there that night, looked at the car and bought it. There was very little drama, possibly because I wasn't there. Clearly I do not handle high pressure situations well.

Now that the saga is over, we are quite happy with our minivan, even Dan, who put a Texas A&M bumper sticker on it about 20 minutes after we got it home. It really is easy to drive, there is so much more room, and loading the kids up is easy now that I can just open the doors remotely and let Kate climb into her seat. Kate, incidentally, believes that the doors are voice-controlled. This is something she picked up from riding with my mother-in-law, who would let Kate say "Doors open!" and then hit the keyless entry button on her minivan so that the doors slid open as if on command. I don't even want to know what the option package that includes voice-activated doors would cost, so I just hit the button when she says to and let her think she's in control.

Come to think of it, we should have taken her with us to the dealership to negotiate. Three-year-olds take no prisoners. After a few hours they would probably have given us a new van just to get us to stop asking about it.

Maybe next time.

This post is dedicated to all of our friends in and formerly in Albuquerque, who listened to this argument play out for months and never once suggested that we might need an intervention more than we needed a new car. We love and miss you all.