I can't tell you how many people I know tell me I should write a book about our life. There is always something! I'm sure most of you reading this think the same thing about your own lives. Maybe that is just life, never ending chaos and dilemmas!?
Over Thanksgiving we felt very thankful to be alive. On our way to Colorado we got into a car accident. Everyone was okay and the car was the only thing injured. About 3:00 in the morning it started to snow and at 3:30 am the snow got the best of us. We were going about 40 miles an hour and hit an small incline and the Expedition started to fishtail. Matt could not get it under control and we slide sideways off the road and hit a road sign. The road sign was just put in last week, and it said "For Traffic Info dial 511" Talk about irony! After we hit the sign we spun out into the ditch where we sat for 2 1/2 hours waiting for help. There were a couple of injury accidents that took priority over our accident. We turned a DVD on for the kids and I talked to the insurance company.
We called in a wrecker to come pick us up but stressed that they had to bring a big one because it had to fit all the kids into it! The wrecker finally arrived and got us out of the ditch. We piled all the kids in the truck and I sat Rachel on my lap to discover that her diaper was overflowing and we were now both covered in potty. We took about a fifteen minute drive into the town of Limon, CO. We asked Micheal (the trucker) to drop us off at the nearest hotel. This guy was super! He was so patient with the kids and was super friendly and helpful. What a blessing at 5am in the morning. He told us he would take us to a hotel that was close to their repair shop. He knew the lady who owned it and he was sure she would give us a good rate since we weren't sure how long we would be needing a room for.
We arrived at the motel/hotel. The owners have home above the office so we rang the bell and waited and waited. The sign posted specifically said to only ring the bell once, so we waited some more. Finally we rang the bell again and this woman appeared slowly from the doorway. She was dressed in a night gown with a cover up half opened. She shuffled over to the computer and sat down half asleep. Her glasses were taped together, her hair stained yellow from smoke, her voice sleepily gruff. I told her our dilemma of the car accident, not knowing how bad the damage was and that we didn't know how long we would need a room for. I asked her if we could just use the pool for a few hours or just stay in a room at a reduced rate for a few hours until the shop opened at 8:30. She then lit up a cigarette and told me the pool didn't open until 9 and that she did have a suite with a jacuzzi in it she could rent us for 35 dollars. We were so thankful. Then she couldn't find the key to the room. She game Matt a key and asked him to run across the parking lot to the room and check to see if it worked. (He had to pee so bad I thought he might wet himself running back out into the cold.) He ran over and the key didn't work. So she searched for the maids key and found it and told us we had to have that key back to her by 8am. "Sure no problem"...just please get us into the room!
We enter "THE ROOM"! This room was straight out of Dumb and Dumber. It was the lovers suite! It had red shag carpeting, a red heart shaped hot tub, a huge mirror slanted up the wall in front of the hot tub, and a phone by the toilet.
There was no real bathroom. The toilet sat right next to the hot tub and sinks were on the other side of the hot tub. Hilarious!!! I really can't believe we even let the kids go in that thing. But hey, it was 6am in the morning after being up all night, and the series of events that had occurred I don't think I really was thinking clearly at that point and didn't really care.
We let the kids play, I got changed out of my soaked clothes. At that point I realized I forgot to get the diapers out of the car for Rachel and she had none to wear. We got everyone dressed for the day and went over to the Flying J for diapers and breakfast. Surprisingly, that went pretty smoothly!
It still was about a half and hour until the shop opened up. We decided to bundle up and walk down to the repair shop. It was only about three blocks away. The kids had fun trekking through the snow. We got there and walked around, followed some rabbit tracks and waited for the shop to open. When the shop opened we discovered that the car was still drivable, yeah! The owners put our full size spare tire on and sent us on our way. They didn't even charge us. So I paid them with homemade cookies I was taking with us to Thanksgiving.
The rest of Thanksgiving is pretty insignificant and boring compared to this little tale! We did have a good time though with family. We got to go skiing. Matt's grandma got out of the hospital the day before Thanksgiving and was able to spend it with all of us. We celebrated Grandpa Marvin's, Grandpa Bills, Aunt Angie's, Dalton's, and Rachel birthdays. Most importantly we made it home safe!
