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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It continually stuns me the amount of stuff people have and the amount of space they need.

Like the OP we have two kids.

And we do just fine with a station wagon, including for road trips and regular trips to the beach.  The car was more than adequate when we had two car seats and is more than adequate now that our oldest is more than 5 feet tall and the other will be in a couple of years.  The car is also perfectly adequate for getting us to trail heads when we go backpacking/camping.

We meet in-laws at the beach each year who show up in this SUV that could carry an entire lacrosse team and they have a trailer and a roof rack too.  And like us just two kids.

But they bring bikes for the entire family (that no one ever rides) and boogie boards and coolers and enough food to live on for a week along with two bags per person.  I have no idea what they are packing for but it is stunning the amount of stuff they show up with - the amount of time they waste packing and unloading it, the amount of it they don't use or ever need, the money they waste on this stuff.

The irony, that they will never get, is that their great suburban home near Annapolis is regularly not reachable because of flooding caused by global warming.  Something that happened a couple of times a year when they moved in 12 years ago and now happens weekly.  But hey keep driving the Yukon because of some need or insecurity that no one can articulate.

We really need to get by in this world with what we need not what we want or what makes us most comfortable.

[/quote]
Why do we need so much room for just 2 kids?
Because a lot of the time, it's more than 2 kids. It's taking 6 kids to a
birthday party. It's taking 4 kids to soccer. I'm also the soccer coach, so
there's goals, cones, extra balls, bag of pennies, and a water cooler. I'm
the fundraising volunteer for scouting... so there's boxes upon boxes of
popcorn and buts that I have to distribute. 
Oh yes, I am solidly in the "suburban soccer mom" category that some on DCUM
snub their noses at. But you know what? I'm happy and my kids are happy and
thriving with suburban life. I've traveled the world, from skiing in the
French Alps and snorkeling in Australia to volunteering at an AIDS orphanage
in Ethiopia. Yeah, I miss that life.  But seeing my children grow and learn
and thrive means more - even if I am a soccer mom driving a minivan. [/quote]

Yet my kids do all of the same things without being shuttled around in a gas guzzling tank.  I even coached my youngest kids baseball team for a few seasons and often drove a couple of extra kids to/from practice.  All in a car.  Quite comfortably in fact but we aren't insecure.

You don't need an oversized car to do these things.  Most oversized cars are driven in the same manner as every other car - with someone alone behind the wheel.[/quote]

NP. You really think a minivan is an oversized tank? Oh, and 2 of the options listed in this thread are electric or Hybrid, so sorry, they're not all gas-guzzlers either. But go ahead and feel superior in your station wagon, which I somehow doubt has ever shuttled 6 kids around, or your whole family plus grandparents.[/quote]

Sorry if I wasn't clear - I don't really have a problem with mini-vans though most people don't really need or use the capacity they have either.  I was responding to the numerous earlier posters telling the OP to stratch that insecurity itch and get a wasteful SUV.

FWIW we have had grandparents in town and needed a bigger car.  So we rent a mini-van for the weekend or even week.  I think in 12 years of having kids we've had to do that 3 times and it was certainly a lot less expensive and wasteful than keeping something around that we only very rarely actually need.  Even our station wagon is almost exclusively driven by a solo driver or even with passengers passengers with minimal luggage - it probably would not be hard for us to get by with a compact car for 95% of the trips we take.[/quote]

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