Monday, November 10, 2014

Hit by a deer...

I guess it's better said, that I hit a deer. John Fairbanks opened up his mission call the first week of October, so, of course, we were there. Spain-Barcelona Mission! Yeah! We were so excited for him, and he had a little get together at his girlfriends house and it was so fun, and he leaves for the MTC on March 8th, I believe. Funny side story, the whole night I kept on getting introduced to people, like his high school friends, and people would ask me how I know John, and I would always say, well, I'm John's mom's husband's daughter...blah blah blah. FInally after a few times of this awful introduction, I figured it's just so much easier to say that I am John's step-sister. Still sounds so weird and feels so weird to say it, but that's what I am and that's what we are, so I better embrace it, right? Anyway...I was driving home around 8ish, so it was dark already, Ben hadn't come with us, so it was just me and the kids in the van. We were actually practicing our Primary Program parts. So, I was kind of looking in the rear view mirror at them a lot in the back. We were on 32nd, so it wasn't even a very rural area, and all of the sudden, right around 32nd and Best, I looked up and BAM! Right before it happened, for a split second, I saw the biggest deer I had ever seen. It all happened so fast, I didn't even know what to do. After it happened, I saw the deer skid to the side of the road, then jump up and run off, so I knew it was ok. My heart was pounding, but the van was still running, and seemed to be ok, so I thought, well, I'll just head home and check it out there. And honestly, because I couldn't see anything from where I was sitting in the drivers seat, I thought that maybe everything was ok. I even told the kids on the short drive home that last time I hit a deer, that the only thing that happened was the drivers licence was bent, so maybe that's all that happened this time! HAH!
We pulled into the driveway that night, and I went out and took a peek, and honestly, my heart dropped! I couldn't believe the damage! You know in cartoons when cars get smashed, they always show them with like a shot smoke coming out of them, and making a hissing noise. That is exactly what my van was doing when we pulled in. I don't know how we made it home and how I hadn't noticed anything was wrong! There was even deer hair all over the place (gross!) Ben said he thought it may be totaled!
Another funny side story to this story is, remember how I had to borrow my dad's truck at the end of August/beginning of September for a few days, well, after this happened, I called my dad in Alaska. I figured that since he was in Alaska, it was perfect, I could use his car for a while, while mine was being fixed. OK, back story... Kathryn's son Andrew was in town for a few months until his wedding at the end of October, so while he was here, he was driving Kathryn's Toyota. And since my dad was out of town, Kathryn was driving my dads truck. And, because he is my dad, Kathryn told me that every time she talked to him on the phone he would ask about his truck and she said that he could just tell that he was counting down the days until she got her car back. Just because he is a car guy and very particular about his cars. We always tease him about it. So, literally, that weekend, Andrew was heading to California for the wedding, and Kathryn was getting her car back. She was just going to wash it and clean it out and put it nicely in his driveway to await him until he got home. Then this happened. I called him, he called her, she brought me over his truck, and I was the proud owner (ok, borrower) of his avalanche once again. I could tell it was killing him. What we thought was going to be just a few days to repair (and actually we were kind of hoping they would just total it out) ended up being like THREE weeks worth of work. It was so ridiculous, but I guess that's what $5000 dollars worth of damage takes to fix. All in all, I'm glad that we were all ok, I'm glad that I was able to drive home and I'm so glad that I had a generous dad to loan me his truck for that long so we didn't have to rent a car. That totally would have sucked!

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