On Tuesday afternoon, I was visiting teaching Wendy Bressler when I saw Caden drive up her driveway and drop off her twins that he is good friends with. I left soon after and went to pick up Isabelle from Ballroom dance. I stayed there for awhile because the kids were performing some dances for the parents. About 30 minutes from the time I had seen Caden leave, I got a phone call from Shawn. He said that he had a call from Caden that he had been in a crash, but was okay. Turns out he had crashed not long after I saw him because he was only about a mile from their house.
The road was a complete sheet of ice, which you also can't tell from this picture, but I was fish tailing when I went to get him. You can see the tracks where he went off the road below:
(Notice the tree on the left bank above because that is where his bumper dug in)
He drove sideways down this 20 foot steep embankment:
We don't know what kept him from rolling - you can faintly see the trail he made here, knocking over that small tree- the car was at a crazy angle:
His bumper dug in down at the water's edge and that catapulted the car through the air to land up-side down out in the middle of that water:
We are soooo lucky that the water is low at this time of the year- it's just a couple of feet deep right now. We are so blessed that he wasn't unconscious because he could so easily have drowned!
I asked him how he got the door open to get out of the car. He said he crawled out of the window. I said, "how did you get the window open?!" (You can see in the first picture that the window was completely under water) He said all the glass was shattered all around the car, so he just crawled out. He isn't sure if he blacked out for a minute, because he remembers opening his eyes and staring at the roof of the car, then realizing he was in a lot of water and hustling to get out because he thought the car was sinking. He was soaking wet from his hair to his shoes, and tried to call us but his phone was wet and wouldn't work. So he walked about 1/2 mile to a neighbor's house to call. He said his clothes were frozen when he got there.
A woman in our ward lost a son there not too many years back with the same sort of accident. The police shook their heads and said that we must be living right. The car is totaled. And Caden got out with a couple of scratches and a bruised up body. He was pretty sore yesterday! We feel so much gratitude, I can't even express it. We start thinking about everything that could have gone wrong and didn't...we are so blessed. I am so glad that we still have our boy!
Anyway, he and Kami had a concert that night, and I was getting a little worried about if they'd be able to participate because true to character, even though Caden was rattled on the inside he was looking as cool as a cucumber, and Kami couldn't stop crying. After he dropped off Bresslers he was supposed to go back to the school for a practice for the select choir that they are in together. He wasn't showing up and Kami was getting worried. She called him and he didn't answer. She called home and Maddie told her what happened and she was so worried that she started crying. Then she was so grateful that he was okay that she couldn't stop crying until just before the concert. I love how those two love each other!
