Review: 2013 Nissan NV3500 HD Passenger V8

If you're in the market for a big vehicle for a large family, a passenger van is probably your only real choice, and I can definitely recommend the Nissan NV3500 HD Passenger van. This is a review of our experience with it over the last year and eight months.

We currently have five children aged two to thirteen, and we may have more. Needless to say the usual options--minivans and SUVs don't really cut it for us, especially not for a new vehicle investment for the family.

So what's left? Passenger vans and a couple other oversized SUV options. Armadas and Suburbans are overpriced and barley top the common 7-passenger options, with not much room for stuff. 

As I said, we didn't want to invest in a new vehicle only to have to go bigger in a couple years. So a passenger van was the choice. 

I've never been a fan of the van look or the big honking bench bench bench approach. So I was thrilled to see another option. The NV may not be the most beautiful vehicle, but I think it's a head above the standard van look. In fact, I have a hard time thinking of it as a van--more like a truck or maybe a big SUV. 

And its looks do grow on you; if nothing else, it is striking. Everywhere we go, we get comments--usually complimentary. In Russellville, I stopped by the Nissan dealership there, and the guys were like "wow, we've never seen one in person!" :) Be prepared for the comments--it's a common theme from other reviewers, too.

The seating is as awesome as the marketing makes it out to be. We haven't figured out the 300+ configurations, but the flexibility is awesome. We removed the last row (for now) and scooted the 2nd & 3rd rows back, which gives tons of leg room and copious cargo space, while comfortably seating eight.

We bought this in April 2013, just before an epic road trip. We put 2800 miles on it during that trip. Up and down mountain gravel roads, along highways, and of course city. Since then, we have taken a family trip to the Shore (here in New Jersey) as well as another, even more epic road trip from NJ to Russellville, AR to Dallas, TX to Tulsa, OK and finally back home--3300 miles. The rest of the time it is for lugging family around nearby, and it does fine for that, too. 

I am a big guy--over 300lbs and six foot one. I was impressed how comfortable it was for many hours of driving. The kids were comfy, too, and my wife even rode in the 2nd row with the baby for some hours, although she reported not finding it super comfortable in the back mainly due to lack of reclinability. You will want to turn the headrests around in front because they force your head forward--that's a trick I learned from another reviewer.

The integrated seat belts are nice indeed. The back doors with the magnetic locking is great--worked with wind on an incline in the mountains. We love the sliding door--no more worrying about kids banging into things. As other online reviewers have reported, this particular model/year had problems with the sliding door locking mechanism. I would just expect that and let the dealership know others have had the same problems.

If you want to get a mat for the rear cargo area, be prepared to either go custom or jury-rig one of the generic ones. I ended up on this one. It doesn't cover the whole area (with the last row removed), but it does a good enough job and definitely is better than mucking your carpet up. The dealer-supplied mats are good for the other rows/front. We are using the winter rubber options in the two front seats--too bad they don't have that for the rear seating. 

We did remove the second row (and third) and were able to pick up a game table, four swivel chairs and a tall side table with four stools, so it is a great option for transporting big stuff when you need that. There really is no shortage of space. It feels very comfortable and roomy, even on long trips. The pic above is our youngest at one in the center console--lots of storage room there, too. :) 

We opted for the V8 SV with towing and tech. We haven't towed yet, but there is plenty of power. Sucker will get up and go when you need it for sure. I wouldn't go off roading, but as I said, it managed to power up the gravel mountain roads fully loaded with fam and cargo. Be nice if there were an AWD/4WD option, but no biggie most of the time.

MPG - we seemed to average around 14-15 mpg on the trip. You can get better if you stay closer to 55/60; I guess the drag at 70/75 pulls you back, plus of course stop and go--it will gulp gas, but you don't get this for its gas mileage. It's comparable, actually impressive, given what a big box it is. My V6 2004 Ram 1500 averaged 15mpg...

One thing I liked was the minimal options. I hate sifting through tens of options when configuring a car, always not sure about the choices, feeling like I'm wasting money or missing out, and ending up with a ton more $$ on the price tag. This one starts at a very, very good baseline, and doesn't burden you with too many options.

I'd say that the tech package is a must have just for the back side camera--you can't hardly see behind you, and sonar only goes so far. That said, I am very underwhelmed with the radio and nav. We kept comparing the built-in nav (which requires a subscription to keep it up to date) and maps on our phones, and the built in nav usually didn't pick the most optimal route, and it didn't give you specific other options. 

I couldn't believe that it doesn't support Bluetooth audio streaming. Isn't this a 2013?! It requires you to use USB, and it doesn't have a pause--you have to turn it off and on. It also seems to get confused sometimes and you have to turn off and on and unplug to get it cooperating. Factory audio never fails to disappoint. The rear camera is integrated, so replacing it isn't much of an option.

Other than that, we wanted the front sonar, but you only get that with the top level trim, which forces you to get leather seats. Given we have a bunch of small kids, we opted to stick with the easier to take care of cloth in the SV trim and just miss out on the front sonar. Turns out this wasn't risk free--wifey has scraped the front bumper twice pulling into our driveway, which has stone pillars on either side. Not sure if sonar would have prevented this, but possibly. :) 

You will have to practice parking in this behemoth, but just park a bit further out and give yourself extra room. Generally look for spots with an empty one on the far side (away from you), so you have plenty of room to swing in. As a rule, if it is tight, I find backing in to be more reliable as you have all the mirrors and camera to help. I have to admit this aspect worried me most, since the wifey is the primary except on trips. But it comes with the territory I suppose. You can get used to it.

Overall, we really do love it. It's perfect for us, and probably quite good for any large family. 

Oh, and if you're in central NJ, I highly recommend Haldeman Nissan in Hamilton. They sell a lot of these (commercial), so they are familiar with them. Don Goldberg there went way over the top for us. He has since moved on, but I also leased a Leaf from them in 2014, and the sales guy Don recommended--David Borden--was equally pleasant to deal with. I like that dealership--very low pressure and they treat you fairly, in my experience.

Review: Saint Anthony of Padua: His Life, Legends, and Devotions

My wife and I just finished reading Saint Anthony of Padua: His Life, Legends, and Devotions. I requested it because we, like many, are fans of St. Anthony, my wife especially so.

This book is a composition of essays and some reference material on prayers and shrines to St. Anthony towards the end. For the uninformed, it's a great way to get a deeper understanding of Anthony and the many years of intense devotion to him over the years.

I was reading parts of it aloud to my wife in the mornings over coffee, and we came to where we could anticipate what was coming next. We even joked about it, because the book is very repetitive. This is its nature as a collection of independent essays, each of which recounts Anthony's life to greater or lesser degrees of detail, each with some slight difference in focus and perspective.

The compiler/author, friar Jack Wintz, O.F.M., says up front that it can be used to reference here and there--that it doesn't need to be read straight through, and I think that it would probably be better consumed that way.  But hey, repetition is the cousin of mastery, so my wife and I feel like we really know St. Anthony's life now.

As a lay Dominican, I have to note that it seems St. Anthony would have been more at home with us Dominicans. He had a similar, it seems, Augustinian education--much like St. Dominic himself. He had a knack for preaching, and we are, after all, the Order of Preachers. He had a strong desire for contemplation, and that is a strong part of the Dominican tradition.  But hey, God knows what he's doing, so I'm sure he had a reason for calling Anthony to the Franciscans. :)

I haven't read other books on St. Anthony, but I think I would prefer less repetition and more in-depth original material, building on what precedes. Still, it's a very readable, short book, and you'll definitely grow in your understanding of Anthony, so I can recommend it.

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Thanks to the Catholic Company for sharing this book with me. As part of the FTC rules, I have to be clear that they gave this book to us in order to elicit a review. The Catholic Company is also a great source for first communion gifts and baptism gifts.

Review: Lectio Divina Bible Study: Learning to Pray in Scripture

I recently got Lectio Divina Bible Study: Learning to Pray in Scripture by Stephen J. Binz. As a lay Dominican, we're encouraged to practice lectio divina, so I thought this could be a nifty way to help me do it. The book itself is structure for either group or individual Bible study, with notes on how best to leverage it for both. I was using it as an individual, though I would like to try it in a group setting. I think it'd work well, based on prior experience with similarly structured materials.

In Section I, the book starts with a great introduction on prayer. That in itself is valuable reading; it also has a short test run of how each session works, using the formula of Listening, Understanding, Reflecting, Praying, Acting. Again, as a lay Dominican, we have a similar approach to study in general, with the end result always geared towards acting--our apostolate. It resonates with me.

The book is broken into five other sections, starting with Prayer in the Lives of Israel's Heros and ending, in chronological progression, through to Prayer in the Apostolic Church. Each section has a helpful introduction to the content to follow, and then the sessions begin.

Spending time with the Word of God like this is naturally spiritually beneficial. It also helps to have the guidance and structure provided by the book. I highly recommend it as a great way to get into the practice of lectio divina, and just generally deepening your prayer life.

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Thanks to the Catholic Company for sharing this book with me. As part of the FTC rules, I have to be clear that they gave this book to us in order to elicit a review. The Catholic Company is also a great source for first communion gifts and baptism gifts.

Review: The Little Way of Lent

Another review coming to you courtesy of my wife, Chistiane. This one on a book of Lenten meditations written in the spirit of St. Therese of Liseux. Enjoy.

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The Little Way of Lent, by Fr. Gary Caster

Fr. Caster delivers. In The Little Way of Lent, he offers meditations that focus on the mass readings for each day, with quotes from the autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux. Lent, he says, can be a season of joy, if only we will focus on God and His love instead of on ourselves.

What Fr. Caster offers us is the chance to look at Lent in a different way. We shouldn’t be trying to prove ourselves to God, because we can’t. Instead, we can remember, indeed, revel in, our own littleness, as St. Therese did. We can’t make ourselves into what God wants, but He can. We can only offer him our little gifts, our small sacrifices, because we love Him.

In small, daily steps, centering on the mass readings for each day from Ash Wednesday to Easter Vigil, he meditates on prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, but with the focus always on God as the inspiration and source of strength for our actions.

I highly recommend this book for anyone looking for a deeper Lenten experience. Its day by day, small steps approach makes a meaningful, joyful Lenten journey possible for even the busiest Catholic.

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Thanks to the Catholic Company for sharing this book with me. As part of the FTC rules, I have to be clear that they gave this book to us in order to elicit a review. The Catholic Company is also a great source for first communion gifts and baptism gifts.

Review: Celebrating Saints and Seasons

This review comes from my wife, Christiane Little, who is a Catholic homeschooling mom of four. She's very crafty (in a good way :) ) and likes to do projects with the kids, so it seemed like a good fit.

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Celebrating Saints and Seasons, by Jeanne Hunt

I didn’t really like this book initially. Firstly, this is not a craft book. There are no coloring pages or neat little patterns for ornaments. Instead, there are ideas, ranging from simple, like using flower stickers to create a Lenten countdown calendar, to more challenging projects, like planning a New Year’s campout. Organized by month, the book offers suggestions for seasonal celebrations like Earth Day and Thanksgiving as well as memorials of Saints and other heroes like Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther King Jr. There’s a wealth of material, a boon to anyone finding themselves short of ideas.   

The book did grow on me after a bit. However, there are features that I find less useful. The “prayers” in each section are basically (sometimes overly flowery) prose poems. They may work well for personal meditation for the parent and educator—a number of them, to be fair, are thoughtful and/or beautiful – but will not appeal to nor be appreciated by most children.

The other feature that I found unappealing was the inclusion of guided meditations and pseudo-liturgies for home and possibly school use. These might work with a group of teens or pre-teens, but I doubt they would be very enthusiastic about them. The points made in the course of these rituals would be more likely to make an impression if presented in a less formulaic way.   

Overall, I’d recommend this volume to anyone looking to plan engaging activities with a Catholic slant for kids and family. It’s definitely geared towards adults, not kids, though. These aren’t ready-made projects; most require some degree of planning. However, with a little imagination, parents and educators will find plenty of ways to use the material presented here to enrich their lives and the lives of the children they work with.

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Thanks to the Catholic Company for sharing this book with me. As part of the FTC rules, I have to be clear that they gave this book to us in order to elicit a review. The Catholic Company is also a great source for first communion gifts and baptism gifts.

Review: Last Call

I recently wrapped up listening to the Last Call CD series by Tim Staples. Briefly put, I was disappointed, but that's not to say that the series doesn't have good content--it's just not what I was hoping for when I requested it. Based on the description, I was hoping for an in-depth presentation of the Catholic teaching around the Last Things. Certainly, Catholic teaching on this subject was presented; however, it was so couched in apologetics that at times it was a challenge to take away from it what was Catholic and not be distracted by other things.

Part of the problem is the format. The presentation was so riddled with quotes (I swear if I heard "close quote" one more time..) and citations that it was a task to listen to. Extensive quoting and citations is appropriate for apologetics, of course, but it just really doesn't work in extended audio format. A big point of providing citations is so that others can look them up, and unless you're sitting there with a notepad, they're just plain extraneous. I get audio books so I can listen when I can't read--in my truck. I certainly can't be writing down and looking up references.

The constant quoting just wears on the nerves because Tim actually says "quote" and "close quote." I was trying to think about how you could do quotations in an audio book format without doing this. I do think sometimes you could get away with it with appropriate pauses, shifts in tonal quality, and change in language/style, though it would take maybe more planning and thoughtful execution in addition to the already thorough preparation of the content, so I can't fault him too much on that--probably wouldn't be worth the investment.

The other thing that can bug you is the sort of self-assured, almost gloating tone he had at times. "Folks, <chuckle> this is not how it is..." seems to have stuck in my mind as an example of it. It's hard to figure out who the best audience is for this work. The reason is that the presentation manner (and where it is being marketed) indicates it is meant for Catholics, but it seems to me that apologetics in nature are best used as a response to critics.

I have to guess it is meant as training material, but that's not how this work is presented. If you read the description, it sounds like a straightforward elucidation of the Last Things. It sounds like it is geared toward helping you meditate on them and help you "be prepared." It sounded like it'd present the truth as truth, in all its own, self-resplendent beauty and not truth used as a tool to defeat others' positions.

So I don't feel like I can recommend it. I have read a pretty positive review of it, though, so clearly there are different perspectives on it. I think it would help if the book were more clearly presented as an apologetics training tool. As noted, I think there are more appropriate formats for this purpose, and toning down the gloating would make it more appealing, at least to me, who also comes from a Protestant background and still has many family and friends who are Protestant. Even if you are only talking to Catholics, if you're doing it to train them, you shouldn't train them to gloat. It's not polite, and it certainly won't win anyone over.

Thanks to the Catholic Company for sharing this book with me. As part of the new FTC rules, I have to be clear that they gave this book to me in order to elicit a review.

Review: Sexual Authenticity

I recently finished Sexual Authenticity (blog) by Melinda Selmys, and I thought it was good. One could say many fine things about how Melinda speaks honestly and openly about her own experience as a homosexual and her journey thence to her current state as a happily married Catholic mother. One could laud that she doesn't regurgitate the stereotypical or ideological polemics in treating the subject as it is dealt with in the media and literature (on both sides). One could reflect on how she deftly catches the average Christian mentally red handed in his prejudices (and in that group I include myself).

As I said, one could and should offer many commendations to her for her prose, but the thing I found most praiseworthy was her integral treatment of sex in the human person, including how it pertains to God. She identifies rightly that the essential ailment of our society is not the current trends towards the acceptance of homosexual unions but rather an impoverished understanding of sexuality and marriage in general. It is heartening to find I am not alone in this perception, though I certainly lack the depth of experience and research Melinda has on the topic of homosexuality.

I learned from her, and I found her treatment of the theology of the body to be insightful. I have yet to take up that work of John Paul II, but I have encountered a number of accounts of it, many of which seem to me, not even being familiar with the source, superficial. Melinda's treatment resonated deeply, and perhaps as a result of her own recounting of her penchant towards philosophy, and just seeing it throughout her writing, I am inclined to think her treatment is true to the source.

Similarly, I have taken up other books on sexuality from a Catholic perspective. Too many of them are self-congratulatory and, dare I say, sickeningly pious. I consider myself one more inclined to religious fervor than your average Joe, but they were too much, even for me. Not so with Sexual Authenticity. One of my favorite bits was this:

Lighten up. Sex is fun, it's relaxing, it's ridiculous. The problem with all of us Catholics is that we have this airy-fairy, pie-in-the-sky, überserious understanding of sexuality. For the rest of the world--and even for most of the sane Catholics--it's nothing like that at all. When was the last time that you made love to your husband, or wife, and thought "Oh! We are becoming one! We are the sacramental manifestation of Christ's love for His Church! We are the Image of the intimate life of the Holy Trinity!" Never. What you're really thinking is, "The baby had better not wake up halfway through like last time. I wish he'd had a shower in the last week. Did I remember to turn the dishwasher on?" Right? So don't give me all this nonsense about how sex is holy and must be kept in a shining tabernacle, protected from the blasphemy of condoms and fur-lined handcuffs. Get real, take yourselves less seriously, put your high horse in the stable, and have some fun like everybody else.

!! I was laughing out loud reading this. And it goes on. It was so good of her to do this, to balance out the saccharine treatment sex often gets from Catholics. This is part of what makes the book so authentic, that and the fact that she doesn't let this acknowledgment contradict the real truths that we can indeed get so sappy about. As she follows on: "How a person experiences sex--the individual, and in some sense unrepeatable, experience of making love on a particular day--is a different matter from what sex, as an element of human reality, means." And thus begins her exposition of the theology of the body.

There's a lot more to say, but I'll leave that for you read. It was honest. It was instructive. It was relatable. It was true. It's a good book that you should read no matter where you stand on these issues. You'll get something good out of it.

Thanks to the Catholic Company for sharing this book with me.