Halloween 2008

Here are Raleigh and Aiden - the Safari hunter and little lion:

We took the kids to Orlando (side note, I wrecked the van on the way over after swerving to avoid hitting a COYOTE! Bad idea. This was not a good start to the vacation, but it did get better. I'll spare the pictures of my van, which had the overall texture of a ruffles potato chip after the high tension guard wires went up one side over the roof ripping off the roof rack and back down the other side) We met up with Darrell and Sandy while there and everyone went to Universal Studios. Then Grammy and I took Raleigh and Aiden to the "Not So Scary Halloween" at Disney. They had SO much fun!!!

Finally, on the actual day of Halloween we took the kids Trick-OR-Treating around Grammy and Grandpa's neighborhood. Then Daddy took Raleigh around to our little street, since she really enjoyed the whole experience!

Update

As we suspected, the car was a total loss. Unfortunately, even though we were paying almost double what our car payment for the past year, we were still upside down in the car. Hard to imagine. We are now wondering if we paid way too much for the car. Insurance has yet to cut us a check...but they did call to let us know that we needed to go get a new car because we can only keep the rental through Sunday. Nice.

We went last night and leased a Toyota Prius. We were really hoping to get the package two (they range from one to five) which had a back up camera, stability control for roll over accidents, etc... but the payments were just too high. The dealer had a base model they were willing to negotiate on (I guess there isn't much room to negotiate, these cars are in pretty high demands because they get 50 miles to the gallon around town!) And we just decided that was the better bet since we are out financially in other ways due to the accident.

Our main objective was just to get something good on gas, which this is. There was a $50 a month difference in price between this car and the next model up....we just couldn't justify it.

Anyhow, we are taking care of switching the insurance. I'm sure it is going to be outrageous.
Hopefully soon this will all be over. What a nightmare.

It's hard to believe...

Chris said he thought the car would look worse.....

I guess if you wern't in the car when it happened, it might not look that bad. I don't have any pictures of the car flipped over in the ditch, but that was a frighteningly surreal sight. The roof is caved in RIGHT over my head... I'm pretty sure the seatbelt saved my life.

I have to say this is by far the scariest thing that I have ever personally gone through. Getting out of the car and then seeing the two car seats hanging upside down all I could do was thank God they wern't in the car with me.

Unfortunately the insurance company is taking a while to get back with us on the status of the claim. Since I swerved to avoid contact, I am placed at fault for the accident as far as the insurance company is concerned, although the police report does not place me at fault. Believe it or not, they are actually considering trying to repair this car rather than totalling it. How safe can a car be when they have to cut the roof off and weld on a new one? If they fix it, we'll be getting rid of it ASAP. Makes you think twice about buying a used car dosen't it? Would you want to buy a car that looked like this just a few months before you purchased it? How functional do you think the safety features will be?

We are going to really push for them to total this vehicle if they don't decide to do so on their own. We looked yesterday at buying a new car. I think we are going to go the hybrid route and get a Prius. We don't really know at this point what we will be able to afford, because typically when cars get totalled they don't wind up giving you the entire loan amount back, which means we are most likely upside down in the cost of the car and will have to come up with money to pay off that loan first.

As for the person who caused this and drove away - there were no other cars on our side of the highway - so nobody got a license plate number or a description of the car. It was dark, so from the other side of the road, across the ditch, they couldn't really tell what was going on. I suppose their conscience (if they have one, which I doubt)will have to be their punishment. The only description I can give of the car is that it was black with darkly tinted windows and chrome trim on the door. That's all I saw. The rest is a blur.

Bad Day...

Tonight on the way home from work someone wasn't paying attention. They started to merge into my car and ran me off the road. I was heading straight for a steel post, so I slammed on the brakes and turned the wheel hard to miss the post. My car spun out of control and flipped over in a ditch of water. I had to swim out the window. The other car drove away without ever stopping to see if I was alive. Some very nice people stopped to help me get out of the car. I'm sure that they were put there to remind me that not everyone is a complete jerk like the person who drove off. The car is totalled. I am ok, thank goodness, just lots of cuts, scratches, and bruises. I am sure I am going to be super sore tomorrow. I am so glad I was alone in the car. Judging from how the car seats looked hanging from the seats, the kids would have been hurt really badly. I am very thankful that God spared me from something much worse.