The driveway.....

When we bought this house, there were two things that I was worried about, the pool and the driveway.  Our driveway slopes to the street.  Not nearly as treacherous a slope as some of the others in our neighborhood, but enough of an incline so that on moving day, the kids were taking turns getting inside wardrobe boxes and having rolling races down the driveway during the movers' lunch break (actually, come to think of it, the movers broke for lunch just after the races began - we are lucky we've never been sued!).  Those of you who have been to our house expressed concern that your own cars would roll.  We have friends who refuse to come all the way up the driveway, but park at the bottom.  Anyhow, after the elementary school open house last night, Katie, Megan and I pulled into our parking spot next to the garage (relatively flat), and a song came on the radio that they wanted to listen to.  I set the parking brake and told them to bring the keys in after the song was over.  Apparently, I neglected to put the van in park, because when Katie turned the van off, it started rolling backwards down the hill.  Kathy was in the passenger seat and tried to push the regular brake with her hands, but by the time the van stopped, it had rolled into the tree lined median between our's and our neighbor's house.  Fortunately, it missed the bigger trees, but plowed down several of the smaller ones, and the driver's side swing out mirror (I always hated those mirrors!) got caught on a bigger tree and was torn loose from the body of the door.  When Megan came running in to tell us about it, Tim looked out the window, saw the van and ran out the front door, then tripped and bashed his knee (which was already giving him problems).  He was able to get the van out and drive it back up the driveway, but we don't know if anything besides the door and the mirror were damaged.  A plastic panel on the underbody is hanging loose.  The door isn't badly dented, and it opens and closes just fine.  But the holes and the mirror will need to be repaired/replaced.  Guess what?  I just had the van inspected the day before......  Anyhow, I am shopping salvage yards to see if we can get a replacement door and mirror.  Maybe the door doesn't need to be replaced, but we need to take it somewhere and find out what the most cost effective (read, cheap) repair solution is.  Argh.  It never rains (actually, it's been raining for two days) but it pours......  Still and all, we were talking about it this morning, and it could have been so much worse - the car could have hit someone or rolled into the street and been hit by another car.  The damage could have been much more significant.  One of the kids could have been run over, but other than being a little shaken up, Katie and Megan are fine.  As much as Tim wants to believe that they were fooling around in the van and that is why it rolled, I am pretty sure it was my fault, and I am kicking myself.  How long have I been driving?  22 years?  I have to believe I have angels on my side.  Some would say that if that were true, these things wouldn't happen.  I think it's a wake-up call for me to pay more attention.  And, now we have firewood for our wood burning stove, right there in our driveway, just waiting to be cut to size!  And, maybe we can take the van to the auto hobby shop and learn something about auto body repair.  In the big scheme of things, this is pretty minor - could have been much more serious, but I am thanking those angels.......