"I Scared"

At 10:00 pm I went in Maisey's room to check on her. She told me "I scared, I scared" so I laid on her bed with her and she was clinging to my shirt and crying.

I'm sure this experience had something to do with it:

Last night, the kids and I headed down to my mom's after dinner. Shaun was going to the church for his Elder's Quorum Presidency Meeting, and I had to drop some stuff off for my mom and pick some stuff up. We left at 6:15 pm, because I wanted to be home by 7:00 to get the kids in bed. Well we left my mom's at 6:50 pm, a little later than I had hoped for, and at 7:05 pm we were 2 minutes from our house on a back highway (99E) when the car in front of us turned left, right into on coming traffic. The speed limit on the highway is 55 mph. That is a hard collision. The car that turned left hit the car going straight so hard then spun around back toward us. Not to mention all of the pieces of both cars flying at us. This is a pic that I took with my phone of how close that car was to us. About 3 feet!

(The white car on the left was the one making the turn. The car on the right is our van.)

I saw this all happen. . . right.before.my.eyes! I took in this big gulp of air and then held my breath as if I was bracing my self to get hit! I wanted to put my car in reverse but I just froze. As soon as the car stopped flying toward us, Maisey said to me, "Mommy, make you feel better!" I said to her, "Maisey, Mommy's not hurt, I'm just scared." I called 9-1-1 right away.

I told the lady where the accident was located and I told her there was liquid gushing out of the car that got hit. I was scared that the car was going to explode because I was right in the middle of everything, and oh yeah. . . I HAD MY KIDS WITH ME!!!!! The horn was going off on the car that got hit, and airbags went off from both cars. I left Clifford on in the car for the kids to watch and I got out to assess injuries.

The driver of the car that caused the accident was out of his car and walking around. He was a teenage boy. His passenger, his mom, didn't speak English, but I'm pretty sure she had a broken arm.

The car that got hit there were like 7 Hispanic people in it. None of them spoke English. One of the passengers was pregnant. There were 2 pre-teen girls that were hyperventilating and throwing up. And the driver was an older male who had neck injuries.

The fire trucks and ambulances were there with in 2 minutes of when I hung up with the dispatcher. They reacted fast and did a good job at re-routing traffic since we were taking up the whole highway. They finally got the horn stopped on that car. It was loud and giving me a headache, and scaring Maisey. I called Shaun. He left his meeting to come get the kids. I had to stay because my car was right in the middle. I couldn't move out of the way. Plus, I had to stick around for the police to question me. Also, it SO didn't help that it was like 15 degrees outside! It was so.dang.cold!

It took 45 minutes for a police officer to show up. I'm not quite sure what's more important then a bad accident that closed down a highway, but whatever. I just sat in my car until they came. 3 ambulances took passengers to the hospital. The teenage boy's Dad showed up at the accident. He pulled up right behind me. I'm a little scared because he could have written down my license plate number and find a way to locate me for being a witness at the scene and for telling the police that it was his son's fault. The last thing I need is some kind of mafia or gang after me. Ok, maybe I watch too much C.S.I. -- But it could happen. And I'm still scared!

The officer that interviewed me had a really cool accent that reminded me of Arnold Schwarzenegger on Kindergarten Cop. By 8:15 pm the officer helped me maneuver my way through the accident so I could go rescue the kids from Shaun's meeting.

So much for getting my kids to bed on time!

So much for getting stuff done last night!

My poor Maisey is traumatized. It was scary for me, I can only imagine what was going through the mind of a 2 year old.