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We’ve been a family of eight for quite a while now. Coming up on three years this July! So, in many ways, we’ve been a big family for a good long while.

But now, you might say it’s official. 🙂

We are picking up our new-to-us, 12-passenger, Ford E-350 XLT big red van!

These larger vans are definitely the vehicle of choice for most families who home school—because, frequently they are also larger families—so we will fit right in at home schooling events, conferences, gatherings. (Except we’ll be the ones with the cool red van, rather than the typical white.)

Jen has balked at the idea for some time, for various reasons, but now she, too is looking forward to the extra room, as well as just having a vehicle with mostly working parts! Our trusty Oldsmobile Silhouette minivan eclipsed 204,000 miles recently and has some problems with just about every part of it!

We have not had a new-to-us vehicle since 2003. We’ve had four more children since then! We put about one hundred and sixty-seven thousand miles on that van since then. It’s been a very long time!

So we’re kinda excited! 🙂

The kids will have more room. We’ll have more room for stuff. We can bring other people with us! (Haven’t been able to do that for a while!) And, if God is willing, we might even need more seats for more Campbell family behinds some day? Ya never know …

We are still working on a name for our new vehicle. The last two vans were Bluester (a navy blue Silhouette), and Silvester (a silver Silhouette)… so we’re thinking something Red…ish. My first thought was to work with the name of the van: E-350, Econoline Van. First “E” name that came to mind was “Eddy”. Then, “Ed” sounds like “Red”, so… “Reddy”. Kinda worked, except the Mom vetoed the name “Eddy”. (Just doesn’t like it. Sorry to all you Eddies out there…)

So Ian suggested “Edward”, to which Alex suggested, “Redward”! I like it, but I don’t think we’re sold on it just yet…

We’ve had some other suggestions: Lava, Red Ryder, BRV (Big Red Van), Crimson Cruiser, Rosmobile… among others. We’ll see what fits once we get to drive him around a bit.

(Yes, “him”. Our vehicles are boys…)

Well, that’s the news from here. We’ve officially graduated. We are now “officially” a Big Family. And if you see a giant red van cruising around your town sometime soon, it might just be us Campbells!