My poor, old van is getting very old & tired!

We had an interesting Friday night!
My almost 8 year old van has been acting up since we got back from vacation. Last Sunday, while on the way to make-up soccer pictures for S, my van would not start. M was working and the van was blocking our truck (even though I can't drive it since I never wanted to learn how to drive stick:)) since our dear neighbors like to take the van's parking space on the street all the time (this is another story). My great, wonderful friend was able to help us out and drove us. She is such a sweet heart and I owe her big time!! To make a long story short, M played with the van a bit and got it to start the next day. M took it to work for a couple of days and it worked fine. On Friday, we went to Costco in the evening. (for some of my friends who are counting, yes, I did go to Costco 3 times last week as I somehow kept on forgetting things on my list). Everything things was fine on the way to Costco and after we loaded the back of the van, it would not fully start again! We tried a few times after fiddling under the hood, but it would not start. It's a good thing I still have my AAA card. I called AAA and after 30 mins we had the van towed to the dodge dealership. The very nice tow truck driver was even willing to take all 4 of us in his extra cab truck and drop us off at home after unloading the van at the dealership. Keep in mind, we had our Costco stuff in our laps and hands. It was a funny sight, but I was ever so grateful to the driver! I wish I had remembered his name because I want to send a thank you card to him.
M and I have been talking about my old van and we were hoping that it would last another year. I really like my old van as I can see so much better in the van with being up more and they kids have more room with the bucket seats and don't like driving M's car very much. And I really don't want a car payment right now. We really like not having any car payments. We did agree if the cost to fix my van was over 1k, we were going to just donate or junk it.
We got the results yesterday and it's the fuel pump and will be less than 1k! Yeah! I will have my van back by mid-week! I really happy and can't wait to have my van back!