Enough with the storms already!

Since storms usually seem to hit around 10:00 at night, when I'm just going to bed, I never used to pay much attention to storm warnings. I'd rather be sleeping than be hiding out under the stairs until it blew past. Having kids changed that. And a 2-year-old in a neighboring town was killed by a tornado a few weeks ago, which drove the point home even more.

As most of you know, the Midwest has been battered by storms this spring. We've been incredibly lucky so far. The tornado from a few weeks ago touched down in the towns on either side of us, but we had no damage at all. Not even branches down.


Then last night, there was a severe thunderstorm warning, and the television said that major winds were a part of this storm. That was enough for me to decide to stay up and see what was going to happen. It started thundering and lightning, with a lot of rain. Then, very suddenly, the winds started howling. We ran around the house, shutting all of the windows, then glued ourselves to the TV. It didn't look like anything too major was happening, since all of the networks were still showing regular television, with just a little scrolling bar at the bottom mentioning the weather alert.


Then....a muffled thud came from the back of the house. Ron and I looked at each other, and said at the same time, "What was that?" Ron went into the kitchen to look out the window, but since it was dark, he couldn't see much. I checked on the kids, and both were sleeping peacefully. Just as we both came back into the living room, there was another muffled thud, and then a loud, earth-shaking thump.


Ron again went to look out the kitchen window, and this time he could see that our humongous oak tree which stands stood right outside the kitchen window was gone. That was when we knew it was time to hightail it downstairs. Ron scooped up Sammy while I grabbed Natalie. Not surprisingly, both immediately woke up, so we got to do bedtime all over again when we finally felt safe enough to come back upstairs. It took an hour to get Sammy back to sleep, since he was so wound up over the excitement.


Miraculously, the tree fell away from the house, and when we went outside to look this morning, there was not as much as a scratch on the house. Absolutely amazing. It's going to be a lot of work to cut it all up and haul it away or burn it, but we were very lucky. (And Ron's comment: "I really wanted to cut that tree down anyway, but didn't know how to do it with it so close to the house." It also ended up smashing an inground grill, which has always been an annoyance, and which I have always wanted to remove. So, two birds with one stone. Yay, Nature.)