The "Fun-mobile"

Are you wondering what that beautiful vehicle is? It's the "Fun-mobile" and it's helping us move! My parents bought that van back in 1992. It was Father's day and my parents went to the store. In the parking lot was this van in robin's egg blue and it was for sale! If you know my parents they like things that are a bit odd that "normal" people would probably pass up. The seller offered to sell my dad this van for $500. My dad looked in his wallet and he had 3 one hundred dollar bills. So my dad offered him $300 then the guy said $400....SOLD! My dad wrote a check for the remaining hundred and they drove this $400 van home. I was in 4th grade and my brother was in 5th and we were at a new school. My parents were very involved in our classes and always helped drive for field trips. Well this van not only was a great deal but it sat 13!!! My brother and I were so not excited about this. Can you imagine being our age and this was the vehicle your parents were going to drive all your new friends in? But to make matters worse (funny now) my mom took my brother and I to Home Depot to buy spray paint. We each got to pick 4 or 5 colors. We then drove it to the local park-n-ride parking lot. I got the passenger side of the van my brother got the drivers side and my mom got the front and back. We painted the van multicolored, this was actually really fun. It looked like we drove the van into a bunch of confetti. The first field trip I felt like staying in the girls bathroom while everyone loaded up into the cars. Everyone else's parents drove the normal min-vans or sedans and then there was my family with the psychedelic hippie van......but to my surprise when everyone went outside to get in the vehicles all the kids wanted to ride with us. This totally embarrassing van was actually cool! The really cool thing was that whoever got to ride in the van got to sign their name on the interior ceiling in a back, blue or red permanent marker. You can still read most of the names and dates even though they have faded some. Fast forward to my brothers senior year....every senior wants a cool car, right? Well my parents knew this so they once again went to Home Depot and bought all black spray paint....voila... Happy driving Todd. That's how's the van's been since then. This van has been such a great vehicle for my family in many ways. Almost 20 years later and only a $400 investment with many memories and now we are able to use it to move home. I'm sure my parents had no idea how much fun this van would have been for us all over the years, and I'm sure they didn't think it would have lasted this long. Here is our first load of boxes to take to our house. A little bit about the van is that the interior seats in this van have been removed but it was just like a bus. There was an aisle down the center with 3 seats on each side that sat two people. The original use for this van was at a local hospital busing people from one part of the hospital to another. Here's the man with the muscle moving all these boxes!! There goes Mark off to work in the "Fun-mobile" this morning. After work he is doing the final walk through with our tenant and dropping off our first load of boxes into the house. We officially get our house back today. The really neat thing is that our tenant and his two young boys just moved two homes down from us and will now be our neighbors.Here is Lulu finding things to do now that everything is all packed up.....the non-toy, toys are the best! She is a hoot and is making this move really fun.