Thanks for the reply, hopefully it will help somebody else with the same problem. We finally got rid of the van awhile ago because it was falling apart.

I tried EBC pads simply because I wanted to see if a higher quality, high performance pad would make any difference. But it didn't, and they all lasted almost exactly 12000 miles, including several different brands from Autozone and Advance Auto. I don't remember whether we flushed the brake fluid on it, but I typically do that every two years on my cars.