At one point we decided to leave my poor sister in law to stay back with Brock's older brother and watch the kids. Tom was pulling some of the older kids around and Tara was stuck watching 5 kids all by herself and one of those boys needs one adult just for himself. He is a bit of a handful. So Brock and I hopped on a 4-wheeler and took up two of his sister in laws to Doc's Flat. We knocked them off the sled a few times and decided to head back to give other people a turn. When we got back we noticed that Adalee and her cousin who is only 2 and 1/2 were missing and so was Tara and the oldest boy cousin. Tom then told us that all he saw was that the oldest boy was pulling the 2 youngest around on the sled and slipped and let go of the sled. I guess the sled started sliding down the road by itself and my sister in law Tara ran after them with the oldest boy cousin in tow. Tom didn't know where they were at because he was watching a handful of kids himself. So we dropped the 2 sister in laws off and Brock and I went to go find them. We kept driving down the road slowly and the farther we went the more that my heart started pounding. This was a steep, curvy mountain road with significant drop offs on the one side. We kept going for a half a mile when finally we found Tara down a steep embankment holding the 2 girls. I cannot tell you how relieved I was because I had really started to freak out. Scenes of all of them falling off a cliff kept coming into my mind, so when I saw them I could breathe again. We stopped and went to see what had happened.
The oldest boy cousin (who is only 8) had been pulling them around in a parking lot and had decided to take them out to the road. Tara saw this and was going to go tell him to bring them off the road. Before she could get to them he had slipped and let go of the sled and the little girls started sliding backwards down the road. Tara said she ran as fast as she could but kept losing sight of them when they would go around a curve. At one point she got so tired that her legs gave out and she slipped and fell. She said she was swearing and praying the whole way down which is exactly what I would have been doing. :P I don't know how but they managed to follow the curvy road over a half a mile without either of them falling out. Eventually they went off the right side down a 7 foot steep embankment and the sled stopped literally inches from going off a very steep drop off. When Tara finally found them they were both just standing in the deep snow and crying. Luckily none of them were hurt besides being half scared to death but their biggest concern was that one of them lost a boot and one of them lost a glove along the ride. :P These girls are tough chicks. When I saw how close their sled was to the edge it made me sick to my stomach. They were so close, so close to having been either seriously injured or dead. When we couldn't find them at first, that was probably the scariest moment of my life. Poor Tara was fairly traumatized because she thought her nieces were going to die and she of course would have blamed herself, which it wasn't her fault at all. I'm just so grateful she was there to help them and comfort them. Luckily we were only a few minutes behind her because when we got there she was too tired to try to carry them up the steep embankment so Brock had to jump down and grab Adalee and I had to scoot on my butt to get the other terrified rider. I can't even tell you how blessed they were. I definitely believe that Heavenly Father was watching over those girls and sent someone to protect them from disaster. I can't tell you how many prayers of gratitude I have said since then.
That night after we got home she wanted to watch Tinkerbell so I said that "today, you can have anything you want". So I sat there and held her while we watched Tinkerbell. I wish I would have taken a picture of where they ended up but that didn't cross my mind at the time. I don't think I will ever forget it though. For the next few days Adalee kept saying "I didn't like that ride, it was scary", or "that was too scary". I told her that she didn't have to go on anymore scary rides. :P Luckily this little event has taught me to really cherish every moment with my family because we never know when our time will come or what could happen. Well now that we got the dramatic part over with here are a few pictures before the big adventure.
No comments:
Post a Comment