Accidents Happen

The title of my post happens to be a Thomas the Tank Engine song. My kids love to watch this silly youtube video about Thomas engines having lots of accidents. They love Thomas the Train so when my dad saw that the actual life size engine was visiting Southern California, he suggested we make a day of it.

We had been looking forward to the trip for over a month--we had not told the boys until this morning because we knew it would be too hard for them to contain their excitement. Us adults were pretty excited for the adventure.

We left the house at 8:30am this morning, half an hour later than I wanted. I am pretty anal about time....I was having a hard time with how long it was taking us to get out of the house...but finally when I stared at the map long enough, I realized we would make it in time for our 11am train ride.

We had a very uneventful drive--it was rainy but not too bad. We arrived around 10am--plenty of time to wander around before hopping on a real life size Thomas Train.

The parking lot was already filling up and we were directed to start parking on the side of the lot. We were parking our cars directly behind each other. I couldn't believe how crowded it was! I was so relieved to get to the event---I had been driving my parents, my husband, and my kids.

I jumped out of our mini van to go get the stroller while the rest of my family started unloading the kids. I opened the trunk, pulled out our big Bob double stroller. I opened it up and began pushing it towards the right side of our mini van so I could put Peter inside.

I noticed that the emergency strap for the double stroller was laying on the ground, so I knelt down to pick it up. As I leaned over, I saw a white mini van heading straight towards ME.

As with all accidents, everything happened very slow and very fast at the same time. I saw the driver was not facing forward, he was looking at his kid in the back of his mini van. My brain quickly processed that he was not going to be stopping his van anytime soon and I better get my you know what in gear.

Well, I didn't move quite fast enough and before I knew it, the mini van hit my you know what and I was down on the ground. Then I heard a huge CRASH and my whole family yelled.

Next thing I know, Mike--who had been sitting in the way back of our mini van leapt out through our open trunk and said, "what happened?? are you okay??"

I jumped up immediately and realized that I was okay. Super freaked out, but okay. Poor Mike--the first thing he saw was me sitting on the ground--he thought that I had really hurt my legs.

We estimated that the guy was going about 15mph. Apparently, he thought we were all moving--I am not sure why--since our trunk was open and I had a stroller.

Anyways, the guy gets out of the car and I am not joking...the first thing he says is, "It was only a tap." He continued insisting that he barely hit me. My husband politely explained that he obviously hit me hard enough to knock me over. The guy was ridiculous. He never asked if I was okay. I have been in accidents before and I get that you don't want to say, "I am sorry" because that admits guilt. But you could at least ask if I am okay. Nothing. All he kept worrying about was whether or not we were going to make a claim with our insurance company.

Our car was not damaged at all, but you can see the imprint of the screws of his license plate in the bumper of our car. Which freaks me out because that shows how hard his impact was.

those 2 circles are the imprint of the other car's license plate frame

I still don't quite understand why I was not injured more seriously. But I think his mini van nudged me enough so that when his van hit ours I was out of the line of fire.

The boys were great--they were a little worried about their Mommy but they were so excited to see Thomas. They waited patiently in their stroller for 45 MINUTES while I got checked out by the staff EMTs, met with the police, and filed a report. I swear, the whole time, this guy was in Mike's face, trying to convince him to not file a report.

At one point, I walked over and I heard Mike saying to him, "I am trying to not overreact here, I don't want to file anything with the insurance if I don't have to. But if the situations were reversed and it was your wife that had got knocked over, I am sure you would want to have a report made out." The guy was clueless. It was so weird. Like Twilight Zone weird.

At one point my dad couldn't contain himself any further and he let the guy know that he didn't appreciate his attitude...and who knows what else. :) Would you believe that the guy came up to Mike after that and said, "is that your father in law? He just came up to me and told me he didn't like my attitude. Do you think he knows that I am not a native English speaker?" Whaaat?? yeah, the guy was Asian but he definitely did not have any problem speaking English. So weird.

The police were really helpful and were awesome--especially when we whispered into their ears what Mike's profession was. They were also amazed at the guy's attitude.

Oh, and while we were standing there handling all of this, there was another fender bender! One sedan rear ended a mini van on the main road to get into the parking lot. Apparently adults lose all concentration when in the vicinity of  a real life Thomas the Train.

Anyways, after 45 minutes of talking to police, event staff, and this crazy guy, we headed to see Thomas the Train. Us adults were all quite shaken and we just tried to not talk about it. Everytime we started discussing it, Peter would ask a whole bunch of questions and we were trying to not make a big deal about it.

It was pretty hilarious though when we were getting in the van to head back home, Peter said, "Mommy, is your butt okay?" Awesome.

I am sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo thankful that the Lord was protecting my family today. One of my greatest fears is that a car will hit our stroller when I am unloading/loading kids into it. I am careful, but now I will be even more careful with where I position the stroller.

I spent a lot of the morning when I was not enjoying the Thomas festivities with the "what ifs?" What if we had left on time? What if one of our kids had been in the stroller when he hit us? What if my location was just slightly a few feet in one direction or another? Honestly, if I had been a little bit over to the left (I know it is hard to visualize), I would have been hurt a lot worse.

At a certain point, I realized I had to stop with the what ifs and just be amazingly thankful that it ended up being a minor thing. I have a sore bum, but that is about it.

on our way home after "the tap" ......thankful for God's protection!