Neighborhood tornado and our rude awakening!

So this tornado took out a large section of our neighborhood in April of this year. I know that all of you have heard the story already, but I think these pictures put things much better into perspective. We were about a block away from where the tornado had touched down. It was reported to be level 3 tornado when it came through here. When it hit close to our house, we were not aware of the danger we were in. The power went out and daddy went downstairs to get flashlights while mommy and the kids were in the bonus room (above the garage). I had remembered that G and I were playing with the flashlights earlier that week and I had put them in his drawer. So I went to his room to get them. The shade was open at the time and I felt a pressure change in the house. Almost as if the air was sucked out, but we could breath. I looked out of his window and saw our HUGE pine trees bend over and remain bent over as if the hand of God was pushing them down. I ran into the bonus room to grab the kids. Never moved so fast in my life. Just then, daddy came running up saying, "we need to get downstairs". Well, the worst was over in the next minute or two. We saw our front tree split right in half, thank goodness falling away from the house. It was pretty much the scariest moment in my life thus far. We could have been in real trouble being where we were at. We were just unaware of the seriousness of it. After all, our state is not known for their super cell tornado's. We had to evacuate the neighborhood due to a major gas leak, so we went a couple miles down to a nice hotel to stay the night. G was all out of sorts, but he did well. I think he had a nervous stomach because he vomited three times I believe, projectile. Granted, he was going through this weird phase where he would chew his food until it went to the back of his tough and he gaged. In this case, vomited. It was nasty though. Sofa cushions went outside on the balcony and we had to get extra towels from the front desk on 2 different occasions. And the pull out matrices....lets just say, I will be even more leery of the strange spots I find on hotel matrices from now on. Might be better off on the floor in some cases! But daddy and I laughed it all off and tried to make the best of it. Having two kids, one a 2 year old, the other an newborn in the same room was interesting to say the very least. I think I got maybe 3 hours of sleep that night and Daddy got about 2. Gabriel slept pretty well though, so that was good! :-) We brought one of the kids sound machines that has a projector on it. We had the projector on the ceiling above G's bed that night. To this day, he mentions the "hotel" when he sees the projection on the ceiling. It was the first time mommy laid with him until he fell asleep. To make a stressful situation even more stressful, I left the keys in the van over night the night before and we found out as we were getting evacuated that I killed the van battery. That is our only family transportation! Daddy jumped it quickly with the Jeep!


So the storm took out MANY of the peer trees on our street, ours being one of them. The further down you went though, the worse things became. Since these pictures were taken, another 2 homes were demolished due to having too much damage to fix. Nobody was killed thank goodness. The house that was leveled completely was moved out of about a week before it was hit! Our neighborhood really came together after the tornado hit. Helping other neighbors. I have never seen so many neighbors out and about before. It gave me a real sense of community. We were very fortunate to have such little damage done. Besides the landscape damage, we had to have part of our roof repaired and some pieces of siding reattached. Nothing compared to what was going on about a block down from us. Scary how things can change for your family in a split second! Gann and Papa purchased a weather alert radio for us after this incident. Thanks Gann and Papa!!

Neighborhood Stroll

There used to be a house here

You would think that we were staying for a week!

G sporting his 3rd and final outfit after the messy "events"

Amelia sitting calmly on the bed while mommy and daddy tend to her big brother

Our "minor" damage (comparatively speaking)

The clean up




Letting G play outside shortly after the storm, not yet realizing just how close we were to pure disaster.



Of all the damage done to our trees and to neighbors homes, the t-ball was still standing strong...figure that one out!

By the grace of God, we were all OK!