great day

so i missed a post yesterday...i'll just post twice today...

so you know those moments where you wish you had the foresight to see the effect of an action so you could prevent it from happening? and of course once it happens you replay the events to see how you could have done things differently...

kathryn's first broken glass object...(a vase- hurricane glass) she was throwing a beanie baby around in the kitchen and after the first throw i was telling her "kathryn, don't throw that, you're going to *CRASH* ...break something... lovely. guess she had to learn that every action has a reaction.

but of course that isn't the action i'm particularly focused on. yesterday after i picked kathryn up from school we went to the store and were headed home on walker south rd (and for those who know walker south rd, it is twisty and can be quite dangerous...there are frequent accidents, like in a previous post less than a week ago)

well, i was ironically just talking to kathryn about how great she has been since we switched her to a booster seat with the seat belt restraint...she has stayed in her seat and never had a single problem (this past summer she was VERY bad about getting out of her seat when we had to put her in the booster seat) she commented how Daniel wasn't good with staying in his seat belt (we had him in a seat belt harness for a few days while we cleaned the cover and harness straps. i put the cover back on and back in the car that very morning so i wouldn't have to worry about him getting up and not being safe.) and as i was in the curve just before the Head Start school, (going a little under the speed limit and not distracted at all) suddenly a car going the opposite direction took the curve to sharp and was half in my lane in a split second... i had to make the call, what do i do?!?! let him hit me? (NO! the kids were in the car and that's our ONLY vehicle!) so i decided to swerve to the right (the car was comming more in my lane every foot, and couldn't tell if he was going to swerve back into his lane so i went to the right where there was no cars...but no road either) well, i knew instantly i pulled too hard right, so i pulled left as the car whipped right and then now in the other lane fishtailing left, tried braking and pulling slightly right, then slightly left...but as all this was happening in seconds, i knew i blew it, i had never felt the car so out of control before, and i just begged not to flip the car, well, the car spun around while it drifted and slid off the road (NO NO NO!) into a ditch where it came to a stop... no flipping, LUCKILY no other cars were behind me or traveling in the other direction while this occurred...so i didn't hit anything! (THANK YOU LORD!!!) ::sigh:: "uh oh mommy" kathryn chimes in once we came to a stop. i busted out laughing... yeah "big uh oh" i told her. just before this i noticed Daniel had fallen asleep, so i looked back to check him, and he had opened his eyes, then slowly closed them back...wow. at least he wasn't crying and at least we weren't hurt. they were all buckled in and safe. whew.

so now what do i do i thought...we aren't hurt but i didn't have the number to walker police, so i just called 911 and told them what happened. i got out of the car to survey the damage... and some passersby stopped to make sure we were ok. what's frustrating is i have been thinking of that I-1o wreck all week thinking about how if i was ever in a situation like that, i needed to remember not to overcorrect and to keep the car steady.... ha, so much for that, when you are in the moment, it is just instinct to duck out of the way (or swerve)...

when the state trooper got there, and i told him what happened, the first thing he said was wow, you were really close to running into these cords that are holding up the electric pole (you can see them in the picture above) or you could have hit that tree or that fence or that sign all about 10 feet away from where i ended up... or a car coming in the opposite direction... yeah you didn't do too bad...just need to get you out of that ditch and you should be ok... so he wrote it up as a car in a ditch or something like that vs a crash that way it doesn't go on my record. thank you! it could have been so much worse. i'm just glad the car is ok and we can still drive it.
tow truck got here and he is trying to see where to hook it up to pull out the car

i had to sit in the car and steer while he pulled me out. that was the weirdest feeling, it almost didn't want to come out... but luckily it did after dragging the car through the rest of the ditch.

i took a picture of the front the only damage i saw after it was pulled out.

once i got home and the mud on the car dried up...it looked bad. lol.
i pulled a bunch of plants out of the wheels before i took the picture, but still lots left. it got all in the springs, the engine, everywhere. obviously.

i was hoping it wouldn't mess up the engine, there was plants everywhere. this is just one spot full.

and to get a good laugh, i had a feeling i might see some of these when i pulled off the wheel covers...

crawfish!!! only in louisiana would you "catch" crawfish by driving in a ditch... there were 5 when i took these pictures, then more just kept falling out. i circled them but you may want to click on the picture to get a good look. they were 1 inch to 3 inches in size. pretty funny.

it took a while to get the car looking ok again. but it only cost $85 to pull the car out...i think that was a better deal than totaling the car and having our insurance go up. but i'm just going to try and learn from this.