Tornado Alley

Last night, we had quite a storm blow through our neighborhood. It was not officially a tornado, but everyone is wondering if maybe it was, because of all the damage. There are a lot of trees down that look like they were just chopped off about 2 feet up the trunk, and almost every street sign in the neighborhood is bent over or gone.

We had some minor roof damage (missing shingles) and our swingset took flight and took out our neighbor's fence.



Our patio furniture all ended up in a bush, but none of it was damaged (the glass tabletop ended up across the yard, but did not break, yay!).



There were four trampolines on our block that all ended up in various chunks on various lawns. They did not survive.



When we went to bed, it was raining and there was some lightning, but nothing seemed too bad. We were under a severe thunderstorm warning and a tornado watch. But about midnight, my husband and I both heard a huge crash and sat up straight in bed. We didn't even hesitate before grabbing the three kiddos and heading to our basement.

We have a finished basement, so it is pretty luxurious for a storm shelter. Luckily, the baby has been sleeping in a Moses basket, so he was easy to transport (just grabbed the basket out of his crib!) and didn't require any special arrangements once we got there. He also didn't wake up (hooray). We have a guest room in the basement, so we put the older two kids down in the double bed in there. They didn't wake up either. We have a futon in the playroom, so we just put that into bed-mode, and crashed. I couldn't believe how well I slept -- there is no noise in the basement even in a crazy storm.

Around 3 AM, Baby Z woke up to eat and we moved everyone back upstairs. When we came down for breakfast, I opened the blinds and that's when we saw the damage in the backyard.

All in all, lots of damage to "fun stuff" (as one neighbor's son put it!), but not too much damage to houses, and no one was hurt. Thank goodness!