TORNADOES!

On Tuesday, April 3rd, after a relatively peaceful morning, I put Braden down for a nap around 12:30pm as usual and set up to take newborn photos of Landri. Unfortunately, she was NOT happy with me trying to put hats on her while she was trying to sleep.

After she peed all over the blanket I was trying to photography her on, I gave up and started watching TV. It was a gorgeous day outside, so when I heard tornado sirens, I just assumed it was because one of those "First Monday" tests. But, then they didn't stop, and I started to get suspicious. I looked at The Weather Channel app on my iPhone and sure enough there was a tornado warning (yep, that means tornado/tornadoes had been spotted in my area). Jay was at a training class for work less than 10 minutes away (thank God he was in town!) and I tried about 20 times to call him but he had it on silent.

So, I got Braden up and told him we had to get in Momma's closet for a little while. I also had a 10-day old baby that I couldn't risk setting down somewhere while I gathered pillows because the warning said it was due to hit our area any second. When I say area, I mean they said the actual name of our neighborhood on the local TV weather report. And, to add to my fear, they said that 18-wheelers had been thrown by this tornado that was now charging at my town.see the footage from it in this video

Anyway, I gathered as many pillows and things as I could but I did not feel safe at all, so I had to leave the baby in Braden's arms (it was the first time he ever agreed to hold her, and I think it's only because he could see the terror I was trying to control) and take down the boxes I had stacked on shelves above our heads in the closet and try to get more pillows. I had seen way too many post-tornado videos to know that you can never have too much protection. About thirty minutes later, Jay finally answered his phone and said that (even though he was only minutes away) they hadn't heard anything (and he was inside a building with an entire police unit there!!!) but now that he had told them, they were forbidden from leaving until it was deemed safe. So, I just sat there trying to keep Braden from leaving the closet, and praying that my daughter would live to see her two-week birthday. 

Finally, they let Jay drive home and after another 30 minutes, we were in the clear. Then, we finally got to see some of the damage that had hit Arlington (in the neighborhood where I taught and where Braden attended pre-school/daycare). It was not good, but it could have been a thousand times worse. We thought we were in the clear, when sirens started going off again and another tornado had been spotted and was heading toward our neighborhood again. This time it brought lots of hail. So we got back in the closet (though this time, I felt a hundred times better because Jay was there, too) and waited it out. Well, there must have been angels over our house because the tornado lifted just a couple miles before it would have hit us and then came back down a few miles after it passed us...I am not even exaggerating in the slightest. It hit Forney hard and we just prayed that no one was killed. It was not cool at all, but I was very lucky to experience this not too long after, as we sat and watched the local news together.