THE storm.

Our damage is extremely minimal compared to other parts of our town.  VERY minimal.  The huge tree in our front yard that we’ve been contemplating cutting down anyway was the main victim.  The tree laid down perfectly across the street and didn’t touch anyone else’s property…not even a mailbox.  If the tree had fallen the other direction, it would have crushed Paige’s bedroom and more than likely Ryan’s. That thought kills me. 

At around midnight on the night of the storm, I woke up to go to the bathroom.  I had turned the tv off at around 11 because the storm was taking a lot longer to get to us than they meteorologists thought it would.  When I turned the tv back on at midnight to check on things, I was immediately panicked.  The tornado was just north of us and had already destroyed 2 towns in a neighboring county.  It looked like the tornado was going to stay north of us, but my heart was pounding and I just felt like we needed to get into our safe place with the kids.  I grabbed Paige and Ryan and Stephen grabbed Paige’s mattress and got it on top of us.  Paige was disoriented and Ryan was just mad that he had been woken up and disturbed!  About 3 minutes after we got into the safe place, we heard a huge gust of wind…come to find out it was about 140 mph.  Apparently, there were 2 new tornadoes that came out of the same system.  These weren’t detected until they were on the ground.  NO warning.  Thankfully, we mainly got the winds part of the tornado and it got on the ground about 200 yards after it was past our house.  Too close for comfort. 

Needless to say, we went without sleep the rest of the night.  The kids went back down with no problem, but Stephen and I just couldn’t get calmed down.  We lost electricity for about 36 hours.  The tree is mostly cleaned up now, thanks to our city.  Since it was blocking a street, the city had to clean it up and haul off the debris. 

We are incredibly thankful to have been spared by this massive storm!