What a day

Well, I finally got Eli to sleep at 4 this morning and was able to sleep till about 7:15 when I got up to get ready to leave for the hearing. We were late and out the door at 8:45 (Daniel was aiming for 8:30) and were making pretty decent time when we were stopped by a red light. We were sitting there, minding our own business when out of nowhere (well, from behind I guess), an old lady in an SUV came and WHaMMo! turned out small trunk into no trunk and gave us all a good jolt (and hours later whiplashy symptoms). Geo started screaming right away, Eli started crying because Geo was crying, Gigi was a delayed reaction, but she finally chimed in too. What a cacophony that was! Geo was bordering on hysterical and kept asking if we were going to buy a new car, why did that lady crash our car, what were we going to do?... on and on and on... I finally sat the older two down and we had a prayer of thanksgiving that everyone was relatively unhurt (no broken bones, no one died, etc.) and that helped them calm down somewhat. I distracted Gigi with the prospect of coloring and after awhile Geo joined in too. I couldn't put Eli down so he just wiggled and wiggled in our arms. The lady who hit us was so apologetic, she said that she had started slowing down for the light, but her new shoes had slid off the break pedal and she had slammed into the back of us. I felt really sorry for her, she certainly hadn't mean to do that and I could tell she felt awful about it. The police got there pretty quickly and we sorted everything out. Long story short it was a looong day and not a very good one either. I do hope that their insurance will cover chiropractic because I feel like I could really use an adjustment or two. Not sure what's going to happen to our car, they will probably total it and give us not enough money to cover a replacement car. That would be the worst case scenario. I'm not sure what I'm hoping for exactly. I wish it had never happened, just hoping that some good can come out of this somehow.