[Ms Grumpy]

Slow down. These are words that you don't hear me say often. But after this morning it means even more.

It was raining really hard this morning and my girls asked if I would take them to school. Where we live there are no buses and my oldest walks about 1 1/2 miles to the high school and my youngest daughter and son walk a little over 1/2 mile to the middle school.

I knew that I needed to get the umbrellas out of the trunk of my Toyota, which was in the garage. I went in the garage and hit the button to turn the alarm off and heard nothing. Battery is dead. Don't know why, but that is another story. But I did get the umbrellas. I took my daughter to the high school at a little after 7am and it was pouring rain and really hard to see.

I went back home and picked up my daughter Leah and we headed out. We decided to see if we could find my son Jacob, who is stubborn and wanted to walk in the rain, with his friends, to school. We went around the block a couple of times and didn't see him, so we went to the middle school.

Now this middle school entrance is located off the 1/2 mile road which has a speed limit of 25 mph.. This school does not have a stop signs in front of the school, instead they have a crossing guard to stop the traffic before and after school. Sometimes they use Police officers to cross the students.

As I was pulling up to the school I noticed the car in front of me was stopped and I saw the crossing guard in the street stopping traffic. Next thing I knew, and SUV ran right into him. Oh my god !! I saw the crossing guard fly into the air. The SUV hit him so hard that the bumper came off the front end. This person had to be going faster than 25mph. I was in my van and had my daughter Leah sitting in the front with me. I don't think that she saw him being hit, I really hope not cause it looked bad.

The passenger from the car in front of me hopped out of the car, it just so happened that she was a teacher at the school. She ran up to the crossing guard and put something over him because it was raining so hard. Within 2 minutes the police were there, nice living in a small community that spends money on their police and fire. By this time Leah had jumped out of the van, I was driving in a direction that let her out on the same side of the street as the school. There was nothing that I could do so I turned my van around in the street and headed home.

The gentleman that is the crossing guard is really strict with the kids and won't allow them to start crossing until all the traffic has stopped. It is so sad that he was hit, but because of him many parents can be thankful that their kids are safe.

So please think about why there are lower speed limits in front of schools. And Slow Down. Please keep this man in your prayers.