(Atwood family: I copied and pasted this from our own blog, that's why it is written so generally, as if you had never heard of this "Kenner" character before)
We had a pretty terrifying experience Saturday. Here's the story:
We were heading southbound on I-15 in Salt Lake coming from the I-215 in our Ford Explorer. We had our entire family, plus our 14 year old nephew who we were dropping off in American Fork.
Our car was in the far right lane going about 60-65 mph, a Wal-Mart semi was directly to the left of us, and a RAV4 SUV was on the left side of the semi. Rem had been watching the other SUV from his peripheral for a bit and knew that their lane was about to end. He then realized that the lane wasn't ending, it was ENDED.
He said something like "Oh my gosh!" which grabbed my attention. I looked over just as the semi clipped the other SUV, threw it in front of us, and then the semi swerved and hit us. We instantly started rolling it seemed. The witnesses said we rolled 3 times. We then slid across the 6 lanes of traffic on the drivers side for a few seconds before we popped up on our tires next to the median, facing North in the southbound side.
Rem and I looked at each other and saw that we were okay, and then I immediately looked back to check on Tyson, Seth, and Kenner. I saw Tyson right away but noticed that Kenner was not in his seat. My immediate thought was that Kenner had been thrown, but then he popped up from the far back and said "I'm okay!"
I couldn't see Seth because he was behind my seat and was in a rear-facing car-seat, but by this point 20 cars had pulled over and people had rushed over to check on us. A lady checked the back seat right away for me and told me that Seth was awake and fine.
Rem couldn't open his door so he crawled out of his window and then went on to check the kids, since I couldn't open my door.
I wondered how it was that Kenner ended up in the backseat for a while, then it finally dawned on me. I turned around and asked if he was wearing a seat belt, and sure enough he hadn't.
Tyson and Seth did not have one scratch, one bruise, anything on them. Rem was the worst with a pretty cut up elbow, and I cut my foot up a tiny bit, Kenner was absolutely fine.
I won't use the word luck, because I absolutely believe that it was a series of miracles that protected our family on Saturday. For one, our kids windows did not shatter. Another is that we landed so perfectly, upright and out of the way of traffic. And the most obvious was the fact that Kenner was not killed. I get emotional every time I think of it. The highway patrolmen told us that in his 30 years, he had never seen someone not wearing a seat belt in an accident like this walk away alive.
Not to get all sappy on you, but in all seriousness this could have ended up a lot differently. I know for a FACT that Heavenly Father saved our family that day. I'm so grateful for that, and especially for the knowledge that had things turned out differently, it still would have been okay. I'll be with my family forever, and this experience just made me realize how fragile life really is and how in an instant it can change here in this life. Our testimony's were given a swift kick in the pants that day, and I'm okay with that.
OH, and if you're wondering what this is, we had just come from the bread store, not 5 minutes before. We had 20 loaves in the back for our family reunion next week. It was strewn across the highway and smashed to smithereens. But that's okay, i'll take the 30 dollar loss any day.
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
