On Wednesday we took possession of our new van and I have to say that it was a bit emotional. I think it was the tangibility of it. Having the van in our driveway with Stacy’s license plates on it made it real. We will never be able to thank everyone enough who made this possible.
The Daily Herald newspaper wrote an article about our fundraiser in March and put it on the front page.
https://www.dailyherald.com/article/20140330/NEWS/140339957/
They want to do a follow-up article and sent over a photographer to take some pictures of us getting the van. Keep your eyes open for that article. We’ll put up a link to it on James’ Facebook page as well as on this blog as soon as it’s published.
This post won’t be filled with a lot of words, but instead will be full of pictures of our van, because that’s what you want to see, right?
Out with the old. We traded in Stacy’s 2008 Dodge Caliber when we bought the van. Notice the snowman antenna ball? We stupidly glued it on a couple of years ago and it wasn’t going to come off easily. Good luck to whoever has to try to get it off! Sorry!
In with the new. Here we are walking out of the house to see the van for the first time. It’s a 2014 Dodge Grand Caravan modified by BraunAbility. Because we had the opportunity to order it, we were able to choose the color we wanted. Stacy loves red, so the van had to be red.
Showing James his new mode of transportation.
Taking some pictures for the newspaper.
Discussing the features of the van and how everything works with our awesome salesman from Mobility Works, whose name happens to be Steve Martin. Not kidding!
We had Mobility Works install a jump seat behind the driver’s seat for James’ car seat. We’re not quite ready yet to put James in the van in his wheelchair. This jump seat folds up towards the door so it is out of the way and will allow space to get a wheelchair in and will allow someone to sit next to James so he can be suctioned during long car rides.
A special thank you to The Lexi Kazian Foundation – Helping From Heaven. We are finally able to use the car seat they bought for us. We think it will work really well for James.
Let’s go for a drive:
Thank you again to everyone who made this possible. You will forever hold a special place in our hearts.
