Crash

We left early Saturday morning.  Nate and I got up at 4 and we were out the door at 430.  Our hope was that since it was still dark that our kids would stay asleep/fall back asleep.  Um, no.  Sigh....

It was raining just a bit and I stayed awake to help Nate navigate out of town.  We were about a mile from our exit to get on highway 70 (where we would stay for the next several hundred miles) and Nate says "Babe, I've got it.  You can go to sleep!"  I had just nodded off when Nate gasped or something, and I opened my eyes in time to see a small red car come barreling towards us. 

This 19 year old kid out at 530 am on a Saturday morning hydroplaned as he was entering the highway and came at us perpendicularly.  Our passenger corner hit his driver wheel, which spun him around and his tail hit our passenger sliding door then sent him sliding off the the right and pushing us to the left.  Both of our front airbags went off and all 3 of our side curtain airbags went off.  But the van didn't look that bad...it is kind of a tank (and I'm grateful for that!).   

I hear all of the kids screaming and crying (and I'm shaking) but I see no blood and EVERYONE was screaming so I figured that was good.  I climbed in back to attempt to calm everyone down. 

And then our day got long. 

The driver in the other car was fine and felt pretty bad. We both called the police and they got there and helped us get to the right side of the road. The other driver was assigned fault and given some sort of citation. I gathered up our essentials (purse, clothes and legos) for the day so that we could be taken to a hotel to wait for a rental car since our van was clearly not drivable.

We were taken to the hotel and watched tv while Nate talked with insurance. I was not thrilled to ride with the boys not in carseats but I didn't have much choice (and they liked sitting in the back seat of a big quad cab truck!)  Since it happened out of state on a Saturday at 530 am we knew we had a bit of time. Nate slept for awhile since we were still hoping to be able to drive home that day. Thankfully we were across the street from a mall with a Barnes&Noble that opened at 9, so I took the boys over. We hung out there for a good 2 hours.

They called us at 11 to let us know to call the car rental place, so we went back to the hotel, thinking we would be on the road soon. Apparently car rental places close at noon on Saturdays and large vehicles are difficult to come by. We finally got a Dodge Journey at 3 (after some scares that we might not get anything before everyone closed!). That car has a third row but NO trunk space.

We had to go to the lot where our van was towed to get all of our stuff transferred. In the trunk we literally got our suitcase, air mattress, and Z's sleeping bag. Everything else we had got shoved under feet and between us. No one had any foot room. If we had had time we might have done better, but it was hot, our kids were exhausted, and the kind man who towed us was just hanging out with us and chatting (and getting us water and showing his trucks to the boys) while we moved stuff. We ended up having to leave stuff behind because we just couldn't make it fit. A brand new box of diapers. A cooler full of food. A box half full of food. Random other little stuff. If the car was totalled we weren't going to get it back; if it was not totalled, they would leave it in the car for us.

When we were finally all loaded up again and ready to go it was 4. Z was crying in the back and saying, "I don't want to buy this car!!!!!" It was pretty miserable. He and N had to craw in through the middle and headfirst into the back seat. He had zero footspace. I had to sit crosslegged almost the entire way home.

We ended up having to stop at midnight to sleep, more for me and the kids than for Nate. We got home Sunday at lunchtime. We were so so so glad to get home and get out of the car.

It ended up taking them 10 days to look at the van (really?!) and decide that it was totalled.  They gave us a good price for it and we ran out and bought a brand new Odyssey Ex-L (exactly like the old one) but we added a DVD player.  And it's a different color.  We love it!  Not what I had planned at all...but it was kind of fun to get a new one.  (As the kind man at the tow lot said when I called to release the van:  Oh, mother gets a new van, how exciting!)

We were incredibly glad that we were all unhurt.  But still, it was such a pain having that extra day, dealing with paperwork, blah blah blah.  It didn't seem to affect the kids too much; in the hotel they asked Nate, "Crash another car tomorrow, too?"