For some reason Memorial Day Weekend seems to always leave me NOT forgetting. I can remember 5 years ago it was the hottest day we had so far that spring. I was sitting under a tree with my feet in a baby pool trying to stay cool. I was 8 months preggo!
Memorial Day Weekend 3 years ago. Mason graduated from Preschool. It was a beautiful day! He sang is heart out, made us so proud. Got his first big boy bike and rode all over that day. And again...I was 9 months preggo! Overdue and just dying to find out who was in my belly.
2011 - Memorial Day weekend.
Emily graduates Preschool
Memorial Day Weekend 3 years ago. Mason graduated from Preschool. It was a beautiful day! He sang is heart out, made us so proud. Got his first big boy bike and rode all over that day. And again...I was 9 months preggo! Overdue and just dying to find out who was in my belly.
2011 - Memorial Day weekend.
Emily graduates Preschool
My baby turned 3 years old
Unfortunately, not all the events of this weekend were happy ones. The night of Emily's graduation we had a storm come through. It all started around 5pm. The rain came and quickly hail started to fall. It was unlike anything I had ever seen before. They were ping pong ball size. The streets were covered in white. The yard across the street from me looked like a game of Hungry Hippo with all these white balls bouncing all over the place. I was home with the girls watching out the front door and my son was in the car with my dad on their way home. It was pretty scary, since we've never had anything like that around here.
a friend had this picture posted on facebook. After the rain stopped, everyone ran out of there house to check these things out. It was like watching kids in an easter egg hunt.
Fast forward through the night.
Hubs came home quick before he has to leave for a meeting. It rained again, for about 5 minutes, no big deal. Around 7:30pm my parents came over to see the kids and see if we wanted to eat together. My mom and I were looking on the computer at the hourly forecast of this storm and it said there was a tornado warning for a town about 25 minutes away. It said it was headed east, so we didn't have to worry about it. Once again the rain came, much harder this time so I asked them to wait before they left. I didn't want the hail to start again while they were driving. 10 minutes later, it was over and everything was fine. Now that summer is creeping up on us, we have daylight until about 9pm. Although it was cloudy, it was still bright out. So...no need to worry.
8:10pm - My mom and dad come back to the house with dinner. We turn off the TV and all head into the dining room. We pass around the plates and napkins and all pick our seats {this is an argument almost every time they eat here, who gets to sit next to Grammy!} My mom opens the windows, as its so humid in the house and the on and off rain is making it worse. Around 8:20 {just 10 minutes later} It starts to rain again and Mason whines about being cold, "go put a shirt on" I say to him..... I was far from cold. My mom stands up to shut the window behind him saying that the wind was blowing towards him. As she walks back to her seat {appx 8:23pm} I hear this cracking noise, I look at my dad, his eyes are staring right at me and I yell "TREES TREES TREES, GO GO GO!!!!" All I could imagine was these massive trees in our back yard coming right through that window where my dad and Mason were sitting. We all jumped up and ran into the living room. The blinds were still open, you could see how DARK it had become, the noises of the wind were so loud, so again I yelled "BASEMENT!" At that moment the power went out. Now, 6 of us trying to find our way to the basement to my craft room in the black black dark.
My dad looks out the side window and says..."OMG...Liza, your trees are down." I can't even explain how that felt. My next thought was the swingset. My hubs and I spent 3 months building the kids their swingset.
I needed to see it. Thankfully....it was all still there.
I called Gregg right away to make sure he was ok and not driving. I was frantic, but surprisingly ok {having your parents there makes it a lot easier} He was fine, was still in the meeting and they still had power. I told him to stay, as I didn't want him driving in it and knew it wasn't over yet. The sky was so so dark, the power all out, raining so hard. It was scary. We could barely see the damages that night. We were 99% sure it did not do any damage to the house, but there was a mess. People walked the streets with flash lights for hours. At the corner of my street, a tree had fallen on a front porch. Trees were uprooted everywhere! The cemetery was covered in fallen trees. It was a disaster.
Next morning, 6:00 am. My entire back yard.
The next four days were spent with a chainsaw and a dump truck. Hauling load after load away. It is finally all cleaned up, my yard is back...but this I will NEVER FORGET!
Hubs came home quick before he has to leave for a meeting. It rained again, for about 5 minutes, no big deal. Around 7:30pm my parents came over to see the kids and see if we wanted to eat together. My mom and I were looking on the computer at the hourly forecast of this storm and it said there was a tornado warning for a town about 25 minutes away. It said it was headed east, so we didn't have to worry about it. Once again the rain came, much harder this time so I asked them to wait before they left. I didn't want the hail to start again while they were driving. 10 minutes later, it was over and everything was fine. Now that summer is creeping up on us, we have daylight until about 9pm. Although it was cloudy, it was still bright out. So...no need to worry.
8:10pm - My mom and dad come back to the house with dinner. We turn off the TV and all head into the dining room. We pass around the plates and napkins and all pick our seats {this is an argument almost every time they eat here, who gets to sit next to Grammy!} My mom opens the windows, as its so humid in the house and the on and off rain is making it worse. Around 8:20 {just 10 minutes later} It starts to rain again and Mason whines about being cold, "go put a shirt on" I say to him..... I was far from cold. My mom stands up to shut the window behind him saying that the wind was blowing towards him. As she walks back to her seat {appx 8:23pm} I hear this cracking noise, I look at my dad, his eyes are staring right at me and I yell "TREES TREES TREES, GO GO GO!!!!" All I could imagine was these massive trees in our back yard coming right through that window where my dad and Mason were sitting. We all jumped up and ran into the living room. The blinds were still open, you could see how DARK it had become, the noises of the wind were so loud, so again I yelled "BASEMENT!" At that moment the power went out. Now, 6 of us trying to find our way to the basement to my craft room in the black black dark.
My dad looks out the side window and says..."OMG...Liza, your trees are down." I can't even explain how that felt. My next thought was the swingset. My hubs and I spent 3 months building the kids their swingset.
I needed to see it. Thankfully....it was all still there.
I called Gregg right away to make sure he was ok and not driving. I was frantic, but surprisingly ok {having your parents there makes it a lot easier} He was fine, was still in the meeting and they still had power. I told him to stay, as I didn't want him driving in it and knew it wasn't over yet. The sky was so so dark, the power all out, raining so hard. It was scary. We could barely see the damages that night. We were 99% sure it did not do any damage to the house, but there was a mess. People walked the streets with flash lights for hours. At the corner of my street, a tree had fallen on a front porch. Trees were uprooted everywhere! The cemetery was covered in fallen trees. It was a disaster.
Next morning, 6:00 am. My entire back yard.
The next four days were spent with a chainsaw and a dump truck. Hauling load after load away. It is finally all cleaned up, my yard is back...but this I will NEVER FORGET!
3 comments:
OMG--how scary! I'm so glad you are safe and sound. WOW!
WOW! that's some BIG hail...
Happy Birthday to your Daughter love the picture..
I also love the silhouette with her photo in it very very cute
Wow, what a story; glad everything turned out ok in the end. I've been delayed in letting you know that I want to share the Cricut-tastic Blog Award with you. Come by my blog and get it. Copy and paste the link below to go directly to that post.--Pat N.
http://patsscraps.blogspot.com/2011/05/cricut-tastic-award.html
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