The Details

I knew I should have posted details yesterday, but by the time I was ready to even blog that little bit about it, I was so tired.

So yesterday Kyle and I head out to deliver a couple of invitations to his b'day party. First stop: his friend Gavin's. Kyle gives him the invite and chats for a minute. Then I tell him to climb back into the van so that we can go finish our run. I stay for another minute to talk to Joella and the next thing we know, we hear this CRUNCH. We look down from the porch and there is the van, bouncing back from hitting the garage. Kyle is in the driver's seat looking petrified and calling for me. I ran down the stairs and grabbed the door handles. I was able to pull back on the van enough to keep it from hitting the garage twice. Then I went around and got Kyle out.

My van had been parked about halfway up the driveway. Her driveway is like ours, it slopes towards the house. Our emergency brake hasn't worked in months and this has always been one of my fears, but I was sure it would happen to us, not a friend!!

Anyway, Kyle almost always plays in the driver's seat when he's climbing into the van. He likes to move the steering wheel and pull levers, push buttons, etc. More often then not, when I turn on the van I've got wipers swishing and the blinker on. But in order to put it into gear, you have to have your foot on the pedal. Well, Kyle is tall for his age... and lately he's been very interested in what the pedals do... and he is Brad's son... (read Paula's comment for more info there!)

Here are all the "silver linings":

• No one was hurt. Kyle didn't even cry. (Although I wanted to.)
• Joella's van was pulled far enough into her garage, that even with the doors smashed in, her van was untouched. Ours just has some paint rub-off from the garage, and it's so old that I don't even care.
• Joella's garage door was closed. Janna was telling me that she usually has it open. If that had been the case... (!)
• Kyle didn't crash hard enough to trigger the airbag. Since he was STANDING in the driver's space, he was right up next to the steering wheel. He would have been seriously injured, or worse, if the airbag had gone off.
• Brad can fix it. Yes, once again, I am so grateful to have married someone who is so handy at fixing and building things. His abilities have saved us so much $$ and headache over the years.
• Joella and Chris were totally understanding. At least their boys are the same age as ours, so they know how things can just happen.
• Gavin thinks it is pretty cool that Kyle drove the van into his house. I'm sure that was a pretty exciting thing to see for a 4 year old!
• We've got a great story that we'll laugh about someday.

And that's the rest of the story.