A Christmas Miracle? Crash-Crash? That's the Way the Pie Falls?

I am really in a slump with my titles.

Yesterday was a little crazy.  I made three pies (two pecan and one lemon meringue) for the ward Christmas party.  Brian picked up Ethan from school and took him to buy groceries for a couple of Salvation Army boxes and to buy a fan for our fireplace.  Brian then installed the fan.  The battery died on our van, so we pulled out our battery charger (you can probably tell that this has happened before - who has their own battery charger?)  and charged up the van when it was time to pick Alyssa up from school.  I picked Alyssa up using Brian's car.

Ethan had a birthday party to go to that I forgot about, so after Alyssa came home we all loaded up in the newly charged van, with Alyssa holding a cookie sheet with the pecan pies and me holding a cookie sheet with the meringue, and with a stack of paper plates for the Christmas party at my feet.  We rushed to Walmart and Brian ran in to buy a birthday present.  (Can I take a moment to say that I really don't like Walmart?  I have many many, multiple reasons like: nothing is where it's supposed to be, even their workers aren't given any information on where everything is supposed to be, so they're not very helpful either, but the reason yesterday is that Brian picked up a toy that said it was on sale for $15. It rang up as $20, but he didn't fight it because we were so late.)  Anyway.  Moving on.

We rushed from Walmart to the birthday party over at Mid Columbia Gymnastics just off of Gage Blvd.  It's right by where Skate West used to be.  (Memories.)  After dropping Ethan off at his party, we had an hour to kill.  So we went to Brian's office to pick up some email paperwork we do at home, went to Target to get some poster board for Alyssa's school project, then we took a drive around the temple before picking Ethan up.  And you have to remember that all this was done with pies on our laps.

We picked up Ethan, and started to head over to the church to help get things ready for the ward party.  It was just after 6:00.  The party started at 6:30.  Our original plan included dropping off the pies and plates first, then doing everything else, but we left too late to do that, so by this time we were hoping that people weren't worrying about the plates being missing.

As we sat at a stoplight on Gage Blvd, Brian checked his phone to see if he had missed a text or a call from the bishop, and asked me to plug his phone in to charge.  As I was doing so, there was a huge, "BAM!" and we were all shoved forward.  I dropped the cell phone, heard Alyssa scream, then we all shifted back into our seats.  Luckily, we were at an intersection that turned into a small parking lot, so as Brian pulled in to the lot, I turned around to check on the kids.  Alyssa and Rebecca were crying, but other than that, everyone seemed fine.

I hopped out of the car and set the lemon meringue pie on the ground.  "I'm so sorry, ma'am," a man was saying to me.

"It's okay.  It's okay," I said both to him and myself.  Then I remembered that you're not supposed to say anything that might admit fault after an accident and wondered if by saying "It's okay," was telling the man that it was "okay" to run into our car.  "These things...happen,"  I said, which sounded a lot better.

This very short conversation took place as I was pulling the side car door open to check on Rebecca.  I looked her over real quick and felt her arms and legs, then quickly unstrapped her and lifted her into my arms, all the while saying, "It's okay, it's okay."

Brian and the man from the other car checked on Alyssa.  She said her head and back hurt, and she couldn't stop crying.  I went back to my seat and had Alyssa come sit with me.  I sat holding Rebecca in one arm, with my other arm around Alyssa while Brian and the man worked out the details.  The man was apologetic, and very concerned about the children.  Apparently he had just come from putting studded tires on his car, so that slowed his stopping time, plus he got distracted by something - I never heard what.

While I sat in the car, I again asked the kids if they were okay, if they hurt anywhere, and I kept checking Becca to make sure she was alright.  After the girls settled down, I told the kids, "If you guys hadn't been wearing your seat belts, and Rebecca hadn't of been in her car seat, this could have been a lot worse."  I wondered if I had used words strong enough to get the message through about the importance of seat belts, but apparently the crash had done that for me, because that's all I had to say.  I watched Marcus' face just fall when I said the words, "a lot worse."  I could see that he understood the seriousness of the situation.

The car seems fine.  Brian said the back door kind of bumps and makes a funny noise when you open it, and we're getting it looked at on Monday, but the bumper is not even scratched.  We were surprised.  From the noise and the force that we were hit, we were expecting the bumper to be completely messed up.  The kids are fine.  The boys don't seem to be physically affected at all, Alyssa started feeling better once she was able to calm down, and Rebecca seems to be her regular happy self.  Brian and I are fine.  Brian said his neck was a bit sore last night, and my back and neck feel a bit stiff this morning, but over all we are fine.  I'm just so thankful that we're all okay.

And the biggest miracle of all: the pies were fine.  The filling of the meringue kind of shifted inside the pie crust, and one of the pecans fell to the floor, but all three pie survived the accident enough to be able to be served at the ward Christmas party.  Truly a miracle.  Plus, we even made it to the church just before the party started, and no one had been concerned about the missing plates.