Goodbye 4Runner

Boy has it been a week! A very stressful one that ended with a bang, literally. Yes, I was in a car accident and smashed the front of our Toyota 4Runner. First off, we are just fine and were not hurt other than me having a sore neck later on, but not bad. Only Audrey was with me as we were just coming back from meeting her new teacher at a new school we just transferred her to within the district. That's a big story in itself and the reason for my stressful week but briefly, Audrey did not transition well with full day Kindergarten at Painted Rock and we found out a school was still doing half day and had openings for afternoon Kindergarten so we signed her up at Monterey Ridge Elementary, a brand new school out in 4S Ranch. We are very excited for her to go there starting Tuesday.

Anyway, Caden was at home napping with Kathy, thank goodness. I was coming down a hill (Camino del Norte) getting into the right hand turn lane to turn onto Carmel Mtn Rd to go to Inn and Out and looked down for a moment to fiddle with my phone which was in my lap(big no-no) and SMACK! The cars in the lane ahead to turn right were stopped up sooner than I had thought and I hit a Mercedes SUV jamming my front side in so tight under his bumper that a tow truck had to pull us apart. Audrey was scared obviously and started crying and said her neck hurt from the seat belt. She recovered very quickly though. The guy I hit was with a friend both probably mid 40's but both super friendly. They were so nice about the whole thing and had this attitude of 'Oh well, no big deal, everyone is ok and these things happen, don't worry'. The cop that came was also a very nice man and very helpful. No one even questioned me or what I was doing, they just let it all be. The guy's Mercedes had minimal damage on his back side. Those are tough cars I guess. We had to wait around a while for the tow trucks to come and Audrey was so patient the whole time. She was a great sport and again, I'm so glad I didn't have Caden running around. My friend Christy Sutherland came and picked us up since everyone else was not available and she even still took us to Inn and Out for shakes since that was where I was taking Audrey originally. By then we needed some comfort food!

My car is sitting at a tow yard now and the insurance company will send out someone next week to assess the damage. We are all guessing it's going to be more money to fix and be considered 'totalled'. We were thinking about replacing the car sometime next year anyway, but we'll just have to do it sooner. But in the mean time, my parents had an extra car, a Toyota Matrix, that my grandparents gave to them and they were thinking about selling it but for now, we can use it, thankfully! Hey at least I'll be getting better gas mileage now! We're so sad about the 4Runner. It has been such a fun car and it will be greatly missed.