The Family Van is a Living History Museum.

Our van is a living diary. At any moment, you can slide open the side door and within about 3 minutes, you will know exactly what our family has done in the last week. Or, if you're hungry, you can snack on a stale french fry, or some crunched up crackers. If you're lucky, you'll find a half empty bottle of water. Yummy.

I really don't understand why the van turns into some sort of a dumping zone. Well, I suppose it's because it's really difficult to open a door, exit the van AND carry the trash. I mean, something has to go, right? Obviously we can LIVE in the van...though there is enough to sustain a person for days.

Tonight I reached my limit. I decided that enough was enough and that OUR family wasn't going to drive around like that ANY more. Nope. So, I did what all families do and grabbed a gigantic lawn and leaf bag and headed out to the driveway. I opened the front passenger side door and promptly removed 4 drinks from the drink holder, a bag of "garbage" from a local fast food joint, a smallish library of books, a plethora of cd's and of course, about 6.3 pounds of various papers. Whew....the bag was about 1/4 full at this point. I slid open the side door and tackled the back. No small feat let me tell you. Apparently, I didn't know it, but our youngest boys like to keep several complete outfits in the van, "just in case." I am thinking they were hoping for some sort of impromptu vacation by the volume of unpacked luggage.
I also discovered that my boys like to collect wrappers. They aren't choosy, all wrappers are fine for their collection. Among their collection I found: crayon wrappers, fortune cookie wrappers AND fortunes, a dust jacket to a book that we don't own, pixie stix wrappers with some gunked on "pixie stix" powder, about 9 packages worth of gum wrappers, an energy drink can, personal size container of Pringles, several water bottles that had the wrappers separate as well as the lids, several packages for Happy Meal toys, and a can of frozen orange juice that wasn't exactly frozen any more. Okay, the OJ wasn't theirs, but it wouldn't have surprised me.

At this point the bag was 3/4 full. I walked to the other side and found much of the same. Only THIS time I found a box of Trivial Pursuit cards. Doesn't EVERYONE have Trivial Pursuit cards in their family van? I suppose we keep them in there just in case we're stuck at a LONG stoplight. Regardless, I am sure our family could kick just about any one's butt in Trivial Pursuit.

After the van was emptied, I took our oldest son to the car wash with me to vacuum out the van and to was the car. Sounds simple, eh? Well, the super duper strength vacuum does suck well, but it just has tiny holes with which to suck, so you end up spending precious minutes picking the wrappers and pennies OUT of the vacuum hose. After several dollars in quarters, we finally finished. Then we headed to the automatic car wash. Simple enough. We read the sign and it clear posted the poor man's car was at $5, I counted out the quarters and drove up to the auto teller. I was stunned, the teller said $6 for the poor man's wash. Apparently car wash people are skilled and taking innocent patrons. They tell you it's one price so you forge forward into the wash and then they stick you with a higher price. I imagine that most people could simply back up and exit the wash. Not me. I somehow managed to maneuver the van in such a way that I was stuck. Anyway, I had enough to make up the difference and I drove into the wash and surprisingly the wash was uneventful. BUT, with the poor man's wash you don't get the super powered blow dry. That stinks. That is the coolest part.

Now the van sits in the driveway. It looks slightly sterile. No junk in it, you can't write your name in the dust on the dash and you have to eat before you enter as you can't count on the stale fries anymore. It looks good. We decided to reinstate the old rule about not taking anything into the van or eating in it. I wonder how many hours it will last this time?