Shawna, Sally and II am home and I'd say the best word is exhausted! Pooped maybe better describes it? When I got in the car today to leave the retreat, it was like I sunk in my seat (nicely heated from "warming it up" while carrying out all my scrapbook goodies and luggage) and just became a slab of meat with mittens (Planes, Trains and Automobiles). The weekend was AWESOME and I know I use the word a lot, but it was. It was so fun, great to meet new people, network and get some more pages done.
Friday night didn't prove to bring much time to scrapbook, but we got settled in and talked to people. We went to bed at a decent time that night which was a good move, knowing Saturday was really the "meat" of it all. Saturday we got a lot done and the time flew by. Saturday night we scrapped til 1:30a and didn't get to bed til 2! I am NEVER up that late. Felt like sucha rebel :) We slept in until about 9a this morning which was nice too, then we got up and ready and headed to the great breakfast (the meals are so good). Then to finish today out with lots of orders and more chatting it up with great women. Somewhere along the way we ran into not one, not two, but THREE different issues with our website, which were all VERY frustrating, but in the whole scheme of things, not huge deals. It seems as though when we need the site, it won't work right, but otherwise it works fine. What the beak is up with that??? First it was a lady who placed an order of 19 pages and only 11 went thru... then it was a credit card that wouldn't be accepted... then it was a password that couldn't be recovered. Sheesh! Makes us feel frustrated on the inside, but having to grin and bear it on the outside, feeling we come across like IDIOTS cause we've "plugged" the site all weekend and it doesn't freaking work! Argh. But so it goes. We still came away with 6 orders sitting in our info box and more to come. What a wonderful thing!
As I started out saying, getting in the car made me into a big blob, but not too long after, there was not blob Ernie, but shaking, fearful Ernie. Shawna and I were planning to pull into a Subway along the way to grab lunch before heading home. We drove seperate cause I got there early to put out our products around the scrap retreat and she had a doc appt that fell in a bad time, but she needed to go for some relief for her bad back that's been crappy for 2 weeks now. So we pull into Burger King instead cause we can't find a Subway and she goes thru the drive thru before me. We pull out and head on our journey home. She was a ways ahead of me as we got going, but I was eating my chicken sandwich and taking it a tad slow cause I just don't feel overly confident driving Erk's car in the snow. So we're plugging along. I call Mom and Dad and leave a message that I'm heading home, had a great time... I say on Dad's voicemail "ohh, there's an accident, gotta go..." and I see brake lights and a Suburban on the shoulder. I quickly see the vehicle parked in front of it on the shoulder is Shawna. Her truck is all cracked on the front. I couldn't be too fast cause of the snow, but as quickly as I could, I pull onto the snow covered shoulder and throw the car in reverse and back up looking over my left shoulder the whole time as I'm going backwards in the snow on a highway where people are flying by at 70 MPH. I am saying repeatedly and worriedly, "Shawna! Shawna! Shawna!" and I get out and start to jog quickly to her passenger window.
"Are you ALRIGHT!?" I ask, shaking like a leaf, totally freaked by what just happened. Praise the Gracious Lord, she was alright. She had (fortunately I didn't see it happen cause I was too far behind) done a few 360's we are guessing, hitting at least 3 times on guard rails. Her truck was in bad shape. She was shaken, but handled it like a champ. I got in her truck's backseat, couldn't get in the front cause the door wouldn't open far enough. So I sit my butt on one of her boys' booster seats and I'm on the phone with 911. Having no real good sense of where we were, the 911 operator was very kind and helpful. As we sit there, we are getting more and more nervous about someone else doing the same thing and hitting us. So we decide to move off the highway. I get out and head to my car, having to wait a bit before traffic clears. It doesn't, so I have to climb in my passenger door, climb over the gear shifter and get a wedgie, then proceed to have Shawna follow me off what we think is an exit. Wouldn't you know it was a left exit! All we saw was the Exit 10 sign, didn't know it wasn't a regular exit, or that we'd have to exit to the left. So we "limp" so to speak with both of our cars hazards flashing, off the exit which only leads to another busy road. I call 911 back to tell them we moved and we end up pulling into someone's wide driveway so we aren't in harms way. We wait. I snap pictures of her car. We recall what happened again and again. We make phone calls. Shawna gets out to access the damage. I get a call from the 911 operator asking for our exact location cause the cop was in the area but couldn't find us. She soon thereafter pulled up, nice as can be, wrote the report and called a wrecker for us. He shows in no time with a lady following him who had just basically done the same thing as Shawna in her truck. Wrecker guy has to call in a flat bed truck cause Shawna's truck is 4 wheel drive. But we moved all of her stuff in with me and headed for home. Shakin' and driving very causiously, we made it home. Thank you Lord for bringing us home safe and sound. I just hope you are alright, Shawna. How is your back? I hope you don't wake up sore. We praise God too for having us drive seperate. Who's to say what could have, would have happened in another situation. Thank you Lord!
