Congrats on your new additions! And what timing for looking to buy! End of year sales are coming (if they haven't already started) and you can find some great incentives out there. (Although, if you can wait until the middle of Dec, they sales incentives will get even better!)
I'm not a mini-van kind of person either (prefer LiLRed convertibles!), but I've owned two of them. Both were Dodge Grand Caravans.
First one, was 1999 more of a base model with 300 miles on it when we took possession of it. We bought it 'cuz we had to lemon law our 1999 Isuzu Rodeo (fully-loaded with heated leather seats). Timing wasn't so great tho' as there weren't really any incentives. They had to bring this van up from another city and drove it up since it was cheaper than shipping it and one of their employees needed to pick up another vehicle in our area. We had issues with the wiring harness where the dashboard kept flashing at us like a disco-tech. Took the mechanics awhile to figure out what the problem was tho' and they only did when I managed to catch it all on video and played it for them. Made more sense to them that way as opposed to our trying to explain it ('cuz it didn't always happen). Had to have 2 replacements, but they were done for "free" 'cuz it was under warranty and a factory issue. Not so bad for daytime driving as you really didn't notice it so much, but at night? Holy smokes!
In the 1999 model, we had one automatic remote controlled sliding door. This was real nice for when your hands were full of something and couldn't really open the door without setting everything down! Wish we'd gotten the second sliding door back then, but we were too cheap and it was a new feature... It seated 7 (kinda tight tho', much more comfortable for 6). Also, we had to physically take out the seats (bench middle and bench back) whenever we wanted to haul something a car couldn't, but the van could. Mighty inconvenient - especially if we went down to visit family and wanted to go places with them, we still had to take a second vehicle. We also started having serious transmission issues at just 60k. We got rid of it then.
Didn't want another van, but since we were still raising Service Dogs and planning to have more kids (which neither one turned out not to happen for us due to medical reasons), we got another (2005 SXT model). Like this one far better! We've owned it since it had only 3 miles on it and we put most of those on it ourselves when we were test driving it. It has 2 automatic remote control sliding doors and the hatch is also on automatic remote control. Mighty, mighty, mighty convenient when your hands are full and it's inclement weather outside! Don't know of any SUV's that have this option.
The '05 also came with an electric sun roof, 6-disc in-dash DVD player, CD player, cassette player, etc. Essentially everything except heated leather seats (which I didn't want anyway). ALL of the rear seats fold down into the floor boards instead of having to take them out. Nice for traveling so when you get to your destination and unload, you still have your seats to accommodate people if you want to go somewhere together. Again, seats 7, but much like the previous model we had is much more comfortable for 6. And with the SXT you get more "trunk" space. We also have the luggage rack on top.
Given the timing of the buy of the '05 model (end of year clearance), we ended up paying $4k less for this van than we did for our first 1999 base-model one!
We also chose our mini-van for it's 6 cylinder, 3.8 liter motor and the potential towing capacity compared to the others. Mileage is slightly better than an SUV with a 6 cylinder motor and we've not had any issues mechanically with this one even at a shy 130k miles! (we do a lot of road trips!) If you need to tow something, you can get one with a towing package or add a U-Haul tow pkg on later.
I need something that gets pretty decent fuel economy. I live 10 miles from a store in the woods
