Tornado

We had a tornado come through our town yesterday.

Brinley & I left gym class then went to the post office and I was pointing out to her how dark the sky was west of us (where we were headed) and then I heard the sirens sound...

Let me preface this by saying I grew up in North Texas and am no stranger to thunderstorms/tornadoes and I do not freak out, it's just not my personality.

But I started to get a bad feeling and went into a bit of a panic because Ben was at school. Now, I knew he was safer there than at home but I couldn't stand to not have my children with me and know they are safe, not scared. Plus it was almost time to pick him up so I went up to the school to see if they were even releasing the kids...long story short - the kids were in their tornado rooms so I opted for Brinley & I to join Ben.

We were at the school for almost 2 hours. We lost electricity shortly after arriving. Not a lot of fun (hot and I had to use the restroom by the light of my cell phone) and at one point we heard a loud noise (which I thought was hail & figured out later it probably was more) but the kids were mostly unaffected other than being restless and hungry.

We waited until most of the kids were picked up (buses still weren't running yet) and I got word the worst had passed and we headed home.

On the way we saw this trampoline and I thought "oh, some one's trampoline got blown away". Then when we got home, we found ours...
mangled and had gone from the back yard (over the house?) to our driveway.

And more backyard damage...

Our trampoline used to be near the picnic table.

Also we had no electricity, which I figured since we lost it at the school and our road was closed - we had to use an alternate entrance to our neighborhood.

This was our power lines -

They were broken and blown over all down the road.

So after realizing how close the tornado came to our house, I was shaken up. My neighbor was home and said it was very scary so I'm so glad we weren't there, locked in the laundry room, losing power hearing things being blown around - my kids would have been freaked out!

Our road is really busy so having it closed caused some big traffic problems. Bryce was having trouble finding his way home, I was on the phone with him and he actually asked "what about P90X? How am I going to do it tonight?" at which point I said "I'll let ya go now, see you at Chili's".

Which is where we had dinner then Bryce came home and did P90X in the garage with the portable dvd player hooked up to my car for power -lol.

We are so thankful we are okay - safe & sound...

and I didn't go into labor!