Tornados

Although we were about an hour and a half from the Colorado tornado we also had a few close calls our selves. I had no idea that we were in tornado watch until Trent calls and tells me that I should get into the crawl space, because they were also evacuating into the basement of their building- it is then that panic set in. I then noticed the sky outside was black and that the rain was turning in to hail and the winds were Crazy strong. So I quickly got the 72 hours backpacks and water into the crawl space and the kids. Then you have to wait it out- this for me was the hardest part, our crawl space is not my favorite place to be, dark, damp and spider webs are everywhere. I had to know what was going on so I left the top up and started calling family members so they could get online and give me minute by minute reports- Which they did and I want to thank them because it really helped me. Our crawl space is in Ethan closet- this is what it looks like when closed This is what it looks like when it is opened- as you can see at the bottom of the step the ground is wet, the water table is really high here- and it looks like a complete mess. but I am to afraid to go down and clean it up. I laid an old shower curtain down so we didn't have to sit on the cold damp ground. This is the weight bench that Trent found down here, I tried to keep our blankets on it the best that I could so they would not get too dirty- that was until Ethan decided that the weight bench was his machine to shoot down tornadoes-- needless to say the blankets are pretty dirty- but who really cares at a time like that. This is where we spent 3 long hours of our life yesterday. I the bright side- there is light down there. The report today is that there was a possible touch down near the center of town, there was three confirmed touchdowns- one to the north about 20 miles, on to the East about 5 miles and one to the south about 30-40 miles, that may or may not seem like a lot to you but to me it was WAY to close for comfort. Needless to say we learned a lot, like how to keep Mom calm. But we learned what was really important. We are all doing fine and no one that I know was hurt here in Laramie, I can only image the pain that those around the world feel when Mother nature gets nasty. Thanks for all of the phone calls to see if we are doing ok. Today was Ethan last day of Preschool, I am sure that it was great therapy for the children to get together and talk about what they went through- It only intensified the last day of school. Here are a few pictures around our house this morning, you really would not know that is was the end of May or that the day before was so scary.

This is out our front door, and do notice that we do not have paved roads, so that make a really big muddy mess.

This is out our back door. On the right side next to the fence is part of our garden- we really hope that it survives. We covered it with plastic and they seem to be doing ok, but we will have to wait and see.

This is the back side of our house, and another part of our garden, I had the idea to cut the bottoms of plastic pop bottles off to protect our plants from the wind until they got bigger we were very glad that we had covered them the day before the storm got here.

What a learning Adventure!!!!