Otto_Maddox wrote: In reply to SVreX: We love our portable DVD player. We only put it in for long trips. I don't know where you live, but our long interstate drives provide only pine trees and grass whizzing by at 80 mph for scenery. My wife and I both have short attention spans even though we watched very little TV growing up. People love to hate on TV. In the immortal words of Homer Simpson, TV is your teacher, mother, secret lover.
Do your kids read? 
Jeep SRT-8? I hear that the GRM staff loves them.
All this is reminding me of road trips when I was little. Stuck in the middle in the back of a Gran Marque for 500 hundred miles and no issues with car seats. Then again no one really bothered with car seats after the age of 3 in the 80's
Vigo wrote: Im still against the suburban and for the minivan. If you get one of the bigger minivans, the suburban has NO space advantage. Seriously, none. Its illusory. If they think a minivan is too small for them, i would skip straight over the suburbans and get a passenger-model sprinter. Ridiculous amounts of room, still gets 20+ mpg. And if it has to fit into a garage, i think they need to build a bigger garage.. if you wouldnt force your 5 kids to sit in one garage stall for 10 hrs and not let them out, why would you consider isolating them to a car that fits in that stall for a 10 hr road trip?
Sprinter's fine IF you can find one. So far around here (south-central Montana), I've seen exactly ONE sprinter that wasn't painted FedEx or U.P.S on the sides. That single one was a camper/R.V. conversion. I talked to the owner; it did get great mileage. Enough so that I seriously considered one for my family. Having done the whole 'track-one-down-on the-Internet' shtick, they ARE available, but if you're not in the Miami or Phoenix area, they're pretty rare. At the time, Salt Lake and Denver had only cargo models, and only the long wheelbase models.
Otto_Maddox wrote: In reply to SVreX: We love our portable DVD player. We only put it in for long trips. I don't know where you live, but our long interstate drives provide only pine trees and grass whizzing by at 80 mph for scenery. My wife and I both have short attention spans even though we watched very little TV growing up. People love to hate on TV. In the immortal words of Homer Simpson, TV is your teacher, mother, secret lover.
You understand that Homer Simpson is not real, and his comments are intended as humor, right?
They don't make a very good defense for the Idiot Box.
I don't "hate on" TV. I just advocate putting a lot of energy into my kids. I'll bet I could statistically prove better reading levels, test scores, IQ's, and social skills for kids who don't have DVD's in their cars if compared to those that do.
BTW, I also have long drives of pine trees and grass. It's 1 1/2 hours from my house to the nearest city over 100,000.
In reply to Vigo:
I totally agree. Unless you are towing, a Suburban offers no advantages but it sure offers a ton of disadvantages.
In reply to SVreX:
You are probably right, but for me the portable DVD player is worth it. It gets used maybe twice a year.
The Simpsons is actually prime family time at my house. It brings us all together. And my kids are still great conversationalists that excel in school. To each his own.
This.
In reply to njansenv:
I missed this. Yeah, my older daughter is an incredible reader, but reading in the car makes her car sick. My younger daughter is a beginning reader.
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