Accident

Monday was one of the worst days of my life.  I hate to even write about it, but it is part of our story so here it goes:

I was driving the kids home from running errands and Livi had fallen asleep in her carseat.  I pulled into our driveway, and was pleading with Nolan to stay quiet while I carefully was going to carry my sleeping sweetie in to her crib without waking her.  I left the car running so the white noise of the engine would help her stay asleep (I generally have the bringing sleeping kids in from the car thing down to a science...) and recall that my door was locked.  I thought that was weird, but unlocked the door and walked around to her passenger side automatic sliding door.  I went to open it but the door froze up and let out a beep I hadn't heard before.  I assumed that something was jammed up and needed to be reset, so I leaned across the front passenger door to turn the van off, thinking that would solve the problem.  The second I hit the power button, the van started rolling down the hill of our driveway, heading toward the big hill of Hodag Park, the dugout, and the lake!  All I could think of in the moment was that my babies were going to go in the water and I have never been so scared in all my life.  I was still stuck in the passenger door, so instinct told me to turn the steering wheel as hard as I could to slow the momentum and that hopefully when the van hit the curb it would stop.  But the van started rolling faster and I was being dragged with it.  I lost my shoe and started to fall down and was worried I was going to get run over.  It went right over the curb and continued a bit further, almost to the bleachers for the baseball field.  At that point, I ran as quickly as I could and pushed the emergency brake to make sure the van couldn't move again.  Livi never woke up and Nolan thought it was fun and wanted to know why Mommy fell down in the street.  I managed to drive the van back into the driveway, get both kids down for a nap, and then I lost it.  Looking back, I clearly must have forgotten to put the van in park and to think that my babies were in danger because of my mistake was unthinkable.  I cannot begin to imagine what could've happened had any of the events gone differently.  I ended up with some pretty awful bumps and bruises, but we were SO incredibly lucky to be safe.

I remember in the midst of things that this just couldn't be happening to us.  This was something you read about happening, not something that could actually happen.  I feel so terrible that my mistake put my babies in danger, but am so incredibly thankful that we're all okay.  Praise God!