Car problems

What a day! No, that's not a picture of my car, but it might as well be. While we were in San Marcos over the weekend, my father-in-law called Saturday morning to tell us that our van wouldn't start. We figured one of the kids had left their light on (it's been known to happen) and the battery was dead. So our neighbor jumped it, it started, they drove it Saturday and to church on Sunday and then we got home. I drove it yesterday to pick Hannah up from school and it didn't sound right to me. So, we decided to take it in today and have the Toyota dealership look at it. So, I got Charlie and his friend off to preschool this morning and headed to the service center and on the freeway (I-610 east if anyone cares) the van was NOT sounding good. I turned on my hazards and got off the freeway and smoke started pouring from under the hood. It completely died and all I could do was hope nobody would hit me. I called CJ and he met me and we had it towed to the dealership.

so now, the bad news:

the engine is completely burned up. So bad, they couldn't even tell what had originally gone wrong. We are going to have to pay for a new engine in our 4 year old van. I'm sick about it. It's so expensive it seems like we might as well buy a new car. They told us we shouldn't have been driving it (duh!) but how should I have known that? Maybe I should just start relying on public transportation...