Hi! I'm Denise. I am a mother of four and I drive a 1996 minivan, dark green, with a dent in the sliding door that I did not put there and a smell in the back that I cannot find. I have been driving it since it was new and it has 61,000 miles on it, and I would guess that 58,000 of those were between our house, three schools, two soccer fields, a dance studio, the orthodontist, and my mother's.

My husband drives a sedan to work and it is clean and quiet and has all its cup holders. I'm not bitter. I just want that on the record.

The passengers:

• Ashley, 13. Front seat (as of this summer; it's a big deal). Controls the radio. Sighs a lot. Would like it known that she did not choose to be born into a minivan family.
• Tyler, 10. Middle row, driver's side. Soccer, soccer, and also soccer. Has never once in his life gotten into the van without a ball.
• Megan, 7. Middle row, passenger side. Dance on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Sings. Constantly. Knows every word to every song on Ashley's station, which Ashley finds unbearable.
• Jacob, 4. Back row, in the car seat, in the middle, where I can see him in the mirror. He is the source of most of the Goldfish, the reason for the shop vac, and the finder of most of the things under the seats. He calls the van "the bus."

Also occasionally: a neighbor kid or two, a goldfish in a bag (once), a hamster in a cage (twice), a Christmas tree (on top), and my mother, who says "you drive very fast, dear" every single time.

We have driven this van to Ohio, to the lake, to my sister's, and to a campground that I would rather not discuss. Here is what I've learned. Print this out and put it in the glove box, if your glove box closes.

The Cooler. The single most important thing in the van. It sits between the two middle seats, which also keeps Tyler and Megan from touching each other, so it does two jobs. In it: juice boxes (frozen the night before so they're cold by lunch and double as ice packs), string cheese, grapes, baby carrots, PB&J cut in triangles (triangles taste better, I don't make the rules), and one "emergency" bag of cookies that only I know about. Do NOT put anything in the cooler that can spill, leak, or be squeezed. I learned this with a yogurt. On the ceiling.

The License Plate Game. Everybody tries to spot license plates from different states. First one to yell it gets it. Ashley keeps the list on a legal pad. Our family record is 31 states on the Ohio trip (a truck stop is a gold mine). Tyler claims he saw Hawaii once. Tyler did not see Hawaii.

The Alphabet Game. Find the letters A to Z, in order, on signs outside the van. Q is the hard one; you're always waiting on a Dairy Queen or a Quality Inn. Jacob plays along by yelling letters at random and we all say "good job, buddy." Ashley plays with a scowl and wins every time.

Books on Cassette from the Library. This is the big secret. Our library has a whole shelf of children's audio books on tape and they're FREE. A good chapter book on tape will buy you two solid hours of silence from the back three rows. Get something the big kids and the little kids can both stand: we've done a bunch of animal stories, a couple of the classic kids' novels, and one mystery that was so exciting Tyler made me sit in the driveway at home so we could hear the ending. Bring extra batteries if your van doesn't have a tape deck (ours does, thank goodness) and check the tapes before you leave; the library's copy of tape 3 of one very long book was blank and I will never know who the murderer was.

Other essentials: A roll of paper towels. Wet wipes, two containers. A plastic grocery bag for trash, replaced at every gas stop. A pillow per kid. A "surprise bag" from the dollar store with a new little thing for each kid to be handed out at each hundred miles (sticker book, tiny car, pad and crayons). A change of clothes for the youngest in a bag you can actually reach. And the rule that everybody goes to the bathroom at every stop whether they "have to" or not, because I know who's going to have to go eleven minutes after we get back on the highway, and it's the one who said no.

In July we drove to see my husband's parents in Ohio. Two days each way, because with four kids "two days" is what a one-day drive turns into. Here is the trip, as recorded on the legal pad.

Day 1. Left at 7:14 a.m., only 74 minutes late, a family record. Jacob asked "are we there yet" for the first time at 7:31. Ashley put on headphones at 7:32. Stopped for the bathroom at 8:45 (see rule above; it was Megan; she "didn't have to" at 8:10). The alphabet game got stuck on Q for 40 miles. Lunch at a rest area with a nice picnic table and an aggressive goose. Tyler tried to make friends with the goose. The goose did not want friends. Book on tape, two hours of blessed quiet. Motel by 5, pool by 5:15, everybody asleep by 9, including me, in my clothes.

Day 2. The flat tire. About an hour out from the motel, on the highway, a sound like a helicopter, and a sudden pull to the right. I got us over onto the shoulder and we all got out and stood well back in the grass, as I have told the kids a hundred times to do, and for once they did. Let me tell you about changing a tire on a 1996 minivan on the side of a highway with four children offering advice. The spare is under the back of the van and you lower it with a crank through a little hole in the bumper, which nobody tells you until you're reading the manual on your knees in the gravel with trucks going by. Tyler held the flashlight (it was daytime; he wanted to hold something). Megan sang. Ashley stood with her arms crossed like a supervisor. Jacob found a very good rock. A nice man in a pickup stopped and asked if I needed help and I said "no thank you, I've got it," and I DID have it, and I'm still proud, and we were back on the road in 35 minutes with a little donut spare and a new appreciation for the lug wrench. Got the real tire fixed in the next town for $12. The man at the tire place said "you did this yourself?" and I said "with help," and Jacob said "I found a rock."

Arrived at Grandma and Grandpa's at 4:30, filthy, triumphant, and out of Goldfish. Grandma had cookies. All was well.

The drive home was uneventful, which after the drive there felt like a miracle. 31 states in the license plate game, a new record, thanks to a truck stop in Indiana. Jacob slept for three straight hours and I nearly wept.

Lessons: Check the spare BEFORE you leave. Know where the jack is. Keep the kids in the grass. And bring more Goldfish than you think is reasonable, then double it.

I'm going to be honest: you can't. Not with four kids. But you can keep it from becoming a health hazard, and here's how.

• The shop vac in the garage. Best $60 my husband ever spent, and he bought it for sawdust. It lives on the wall next to where I park, with the hose right there, and every Saturday morning the rule is: everybody takes out everything that's theirs, and then I vacuum. It takes ten minutes. A shop vac will pick up Goldfish, sand, gravel, crayon bits, a Happy Meal toy, and once, a sock. A regular vacuum would have died. The shop vac just made a noise like "hm" and kept going.
• Rubber floor mats. All the way back. You can pull them out and hose them off in the driveway. Carpet mats are for people without children.
• No food that can melt. No chocolate, no gummy anything, no crayons in July. This is a rule and it is broken constantly and every time it is broken I find out in August.
• The trash bag. A plastic grocery bag on the back of my seat. Emptied every time we get gas. If it's full, that's a sign we've been in the van too long, which is always.
• Wet wipes in every door pocket. For hands, faces, seats, dashboards, and one time the windshield from the inside (don't ask).
• Once a month, the car wash with the vacuum you put quarters in, so a professional can get the stuff the shop vac can't reach. I bring a whole roll of quarters. It is never enough.

The smell in the back remains a mystery. I have checked under every seat. I have checked in the seat pockets. I have shampooed. I am starting to think it's just the sound of the van sighing.

People ask me what I do all day. Here is what I do all day. This is on the refrigerator in three colors of marker, and now it's here so that when my husband asks "can you pick up my dry cleaning," he can look this up first.

I figured it out once: that's about 140 miles a week without leaving town. The van and I are very close.

An ongoing list. Updated every Saturday after the shop vac. I am not making any of these up, and I wish I were.

• Goldfish crackers. Always. Uncountable. I believe they are breeding.
• Forty-one cents, a Canadian penny, and a token from a pizza arcade we have not been to since 1997.
• A permission slip due in March. It was July.
• Half a Beanie Baby. Just the half. We never found the other half. Megan still asks about it.
• A library book on tape (tape 2 of 4), which explains the late fee.
• A single mitten, a single sock, a single shoe (Jacob's, and he walked into the house without noticing).
• Sixteen crayons, fused into one large crayon, in a shape that Tyler says looks like a dinosaur.
• A juice box that was, as far as I can tell, from the previous school year. I did not open it. I put on gloves.
• Three of the little plastic toys from the kids' meals, one still in the bag.
• A Pokemon card that Tyler had accused Megan of stealing. Megan was owed an apology. She got one. She is still bringing it up.
• My sunglasses. The good ones. From last summer. I had bought new ones.
• A retainer. (Ashley's. In its case, thank heaven. Under the third row. She had "looked everywhere.")
• A sticky spot that I have never identified and have decided not to.
• One (1) very good rock. Jacob was thrilled. It's on his dresser now.

Send me yours. I'll add the best ones. Misery loves company, and so does a minivan.

Coming soon-ish: "Snacks That Don't Melt: A Field Guide," and my husband has promised to write up "What the Sedan Is Like," which I'm told will be short. Also the Thanksgiving drive to my sister's, if we survive it.

Other people who live in their cars: Hank & Peggy's Great American Road Trip (retired people who road-trip on PURPOSE, imagine), Dayhikes with Dad, The Working Mom's Notebook, and Project '67 Mustang, which is a man in Flint who has spent two years on a car with no seats at all, so, you know, it could be worse.