Thursday, April 27, 2017

February 2017

This post has been sitting in draft for months.  It's time to get back on the blogging band wagon.  Our lives have been so busy lately that I'm forgetting things I want to remember.  I need to do better which means I need to make the time for it.  I have the time if I use it wisely.  Anyway, here's our February nutshell, in an effort to get us caught up.


This little girl at tennis cracked me up!  After doing drills for a while the kids all have to help clean up.  Many use their rackets or ball hoppers to clean up the balls.  This girl got creative with her shirt!  I was laughing and needed the picture!

The Mia Maids in our ward (who I was serving as an advisor for at the time) had a combined activity with the teachers and the teacher were in charge.  So, they had a spaghetti tower building contest--very YM-type of activity.  Our girls worked hard, but ultimately lost.


This little girl has struggled with going to Preschool ever since Christmas (which is right when I was called to YW and started going out on Wednesday nights) but Valentine's Day was exciting for her.  It was her first time exchanging Valentine's with friends and she was so excited to be a "big girl"!

Ahhh....the painting of Kai's room.  It is a dark blue ceiling and a gray wall.  Unfortunately, the wall looks more blue-gray than Kai and I wanted but I'm not up for painting it again, so we're making do.


Finn's room with painting done, but old carpet and baseboards still in.

On an off-day from school we headed to Park Meadows mall.  I love the Disney store and can be brought to tears just standing there at looking at all of the Disney items.  My kids love the screen where they can watch clips of various Disney shows.  I look forward to 30 minutes in this store a few times a year.  

We really went to the mall, though, so the boys could buy some things from the Lego store with their allowance money.  There ended up being a sale on mini-figures that day and so they got 4 for the price of 3 and so they both took a very.long.time building min-figures.  Kai was by far the slowest.  Finn built all of his figures with tennis rackets which made me smile!


While we were waiting for Kai to finish up we took a picture with this lego creation.

Poor Bree saw me from this angle a lot that month as I worked to get Kai's room done.  In the last 14 months I've now painted 4 rooms and I'm feeling burnt out.  I still have to do one more, but I just can't quite muster up the motivation.

Ahhh....February 23rd.  Bree and I were headed to the kick-off event for this year's Great Strides walk.  It was being hosted at a bar down in the Springs and there was going to be pizza and visiting.  It was snowing off and on that day and I had previously been on the roads by my house earlier in the day and had noticed how treacherous they were.  When Bree and I headed out that night it had started snowing again and I had felt like I needed to take my time and just not worry about being punctual.  At the light near my house I was stopped behind a clearly older gentleman (driving a Lincoln Town Car made it more obvious) and I had the impression that I needed to give him plenty of room as we followed in case of ice.  Of course, once the light turned green, that impression was forgotten and I began to follow along like all of the traffic does on that stretch of road.  It's a narrow two-lane road where everyone follows along like ants in a line.  We were no more than a half mile from the house when I noticed that he began to fishtail.  I cautiously slowed down, but did not want to slam on the brakes because he was slipping that wouldn't be a good idea.  I was hoping he would be able to pull out of it and just when it looked like he had it under control, he lost all control.  He veered into oncoming traffic and crashed into a white BMW head on and then crossed back into our lane.  I had, in the meantime, stepped on the brake and was just slightly steering to the right to try to avoid the accident, but there is no shoulder on this road and there was no where to go.  When his car crossed back in to my lane he managed to just clip my front end which ended up propelling the van in the direction the wheels were turning, which was to the right--right into the ditch.  My first thought was that the impact wasn't too bad and we weren't in bad shape.  And then I looked out the passenger window and saw we were headed straight toward a culvert.  At that point I began to pray that the van would stop soon.  I knew the culvert was not good news and would turn an ok situation into a nightmare.  Luckily, the van stopped inches from the culvert.


However, it left us at very frightening angle.  While the other two cars involved were totalled and left sitting in the middle of their lanes completely blocking traffic from both directions, we were balanced precariously on the edge of this cliff and I was not comfortable remaining in the van.  I grabbed my purse and Bree and out we hopped.  It was bitter, bitter cold and I did not want to stand outside with Bree but I did not want to roll with the van either.  Thankfully a sweet woman by the name of Aubrey saw me getting out of the van and she said the minute she saw I had a kid she knew she needed to stop.  She pulled into the grassy field ahead of us and gave us a warm car to sit in while we waited for the police to arrive and tell us what to do.  She was with us for an hour while I tried to figure out how to handle the situation.  It took 15 minutes just for the cops to arrive and then they had to interview everyone, direct traffic around the smashed vehicles, call a tow truck to remove the two cars from the roadway, and gather information.  Because my car was "minor" compared to the rest involved, I did not see or hear from the police much.  Bree and I visited with Aubrey and her 3 year-old Austin and waited.  When the police did come to talk to me they asked for license, registration, and insurance.  I only had one out of the three as the other two were in the glovebox and I did not want to climb to that side of the car to get them.  The police man took one look at the van and agreed that we could skip those documents.  Shewww! Eventually, I had a ward friend head to my house to stay with the boys so that Reid could come out to grab Bree and take her home.  He then left all 3 kids with our friend and came out to get me.  The other two vehicles were towed within 2 hours of the accident but the van remained there on the cliff for another two more hours.  At 10pm when the tow truck finally got back to our van (he had been off at a multi-vehicle pile up that also included a fire truck stuck on an icy road) he needed two trucks hooked up to the van to pull the front and back at the same time in hopes it wouldn't roll.  The police drove by right as the process started and ended up shutting down the road again as they worked to pull my van out of the ditch.  At the first pull the car lurched back and for a half a second I thought it was done for, but they were able to stop it and then jerked fast and hard on both chains and the same time and got it out.  By then they decided that I probably should not drive it, just in case (I had completely planned on driving it away) and it was off to the tow yard.  I spent all day Friday talking to the insurance companies involved, arranging for a rental van, and trying to find a body shop to take my car.  Finally at the end of the day I was able to arrange for the van to be towed to a shop, but due to the weekend, it didn't happen until Monday.  My van remained in the shop for nearly a month.  My kids grew to love our rental van--a Chrysler Pacifica--and were sad to see it go.  I was happy to get my car back, but really it made no difference.  We had a van and were not paying the bill, so it all worked out.

2 comments:

Laurel C. said...

I've been waiting for this post about your accident. I wanted to hear all the details! This must have been such a harrowing experience. Sounds like you really kept your cool, though. But what else would I expect from you? You always handle things so well. I'm glad that no one was hurt or went over the brink!

Laurel C. said...

PS: I'm glad you're back on the blogging bandwagon! I love reading your posts!