Slippy Slidy!

Sunday was quite a day. We started off all headed to church (except Pete who spent the night at church with his youth group) through about two inches of snow that had started falling around midnight. The roads weren’t great, but for around here, definitely not the worst we’ve seen. As I was driving I was chatting about the contract Dill and I had made so that he could have $50.00 to buy holiday gifts at his school store. The whole family was joking and laughing about how expensive it was to buy gifts when you have a large family when I suddenly hit a spot of black ice and the car started spinning out of control. I was only going about 15 mph so it really took me by surprise. We turned completely around and slammed into a mailbox on the other side of the road and slid into a ditch. We needed a snowplow to help pull us out of the ditch and then we were on the road again. The passenger side mirror was left dangling and the running board was smashed underneath the car, but no other damage was visible. (besides a very mangled mailbox!!) We got onto the expressway rather than taking the back roads to church thinking the roads would be better and slid again. We sort of teetered on the edge of the on ramp and I needed to put us in 4 wheel drive low to get us back on the road. This time, we got out on our own but I could not get the car out of 4 WD low once we got on the highway. By this point, we were already 30 minutes late for church and decided to limp back home. It was amazing how long it took us to get home when the fastest you can drive is 20 MPH. But, we made it home and everyone was safe. We missed church, but everyone in the car said they prayed a lot while we were spinning out of control and dangling on three wheels off the on ramp!
We were planning to go to Pepper’s parents house for birthday celebrations but we’d had enough driving excitement for the day so we decided to postpone the visit. Spent the rest of the day cooking and playing in the snow with the kids. Tomorrow we get to call the insurance company and fix a mailbox in the frigid cold…. But no one was hurt, everyone is safe and we did make it to church to pick up Pete. (Who was having so much fun with his youth group he didn’t even notice that we weren’t there when we were supposed to be!)