5.2010 {I need some Ruby Slippers.....}

...it is tornado season here in Norman, Oklahoma.

We had severe weather warnings all day long. Buuut it was hot, humid and a little windy for most of the afternoon. My friend Marie & Zacharie came over at 3:45 to play and I was tending baby Destry too. We turned on the T.V. for a while and watched the meteorologist's go nutso on the air. (Tyson and I find them humorous...they LOVE their weather here.) We were playing with the kids when the sirens came on. They are maybe 400 feet from our home and were surprisingly LOUD! All of the neighbors went outside to check out the sky. I wasn't sure if it was time to jump into the tub or what. Nobody was panicking.

I called to see where Tyson was and he said he was on his way home from studying. He said it was a little nerve racking to be outside. (Ya think?) Antoine (Marie's husband) doesn't have a cell phone and we didn't know where he was, so she was nervous about that.

We stayed pretty calm until Destry's mom came to pick her up at 5:30 p.m. she was in panic mode, grabbed her baby, shouted some stuff about the T.V. and took off running to her car. We evaluated ourselves and thought "should we be panicking too?" After that we threw the kids into the tub, got some blankets and I said a prayer. Luckily our power didn't go out so throughout the whole thing we were able to watch the news and see if the tornado was going to come our direction.

The sky had some crazy clouds and it was fairly windy, but still bright and warm out.

Tyson came home. I was grateful. Antoine made it home to his apartment, had no power so he came and joined us. The sirens finally turned off and after that I was relieved.

Then we quickly realized from the news how close we really were to the Tornado, much too close for comfort. It was 2 or so miles from our home. A member of our Bishopric (Bro.Ellis) was driving by our church (down the street), got out of his car and watched the Tornado cross the highway. Crazy. I would have been freaking out if I could SEE it!

Our sweet Bishop Jensen called us wondering what the condition of our area of town was like and if we knew how the other neighboring apartments in our ward boundaries were doing. As far as we knew everyone was safe and protected.

The tornado struck hard in the Noble area, a small town S.E. of us (they are apart of our Stake.) It was sure sad watching the news, seeing cars that had overturned, homes ruined, businesses destroyed and many injured with 7 deaths accounted for so far.

I am so grateful we were safe. Thank you for the prayers said by our family in our behalf and for Sarah's phone call asking if I was dead and Scott's text telling us he was going to watch Twister later on that night...those lightened our mood. :)

More severe weather is forecast for the remaining of the week...I'll keep ya'll posted!