Day 13

Well we all know how lucky the number 13 is. The last time we had weather predictions on this scale was Nov 17, 2013, when the EF4 tornado hit our town. Over morning coffee Brandon very politely encouraged me to reconsider our shelter area. He wasn't sure I had picked the right spot in the basement. So we have relocated our emergency tornado box, restocked, put fresh batteries in the weather radio and spent a little time this morning preparing...just in case. Large hail (2" size) was predicted in the morning. We didn't see that happen, luckily. As I told the kids, everything that is important has legs to walk down to the basement - if all we have is ourselves we will be fine. The thing about having some advanced warning is you start to feel the need to haul stuff downstairs!

In the afternoon the rain came, the clouds rolled in, but we never had hail. And then true to fashion it warmed up and cleared off. The boys played catch. We sat outside and tried to have a quiet adult moment. Within 30 seconds of sitting down. Grant joined the party. 30 seconds later Elizabeth was there. She asked for the towel I was sitting on to dry her chair and sure enough in the process I knocked my glass off my chair and it shattered. Quiet adult moment passed.

The kids had cheeseburger sliders for dinner. Adults had racqulette. All seemed calm. My mom texted and said that it was on the national news that we were in the eye of the storm. The tornado watch had started at 2 and was set to expire at 10pm. Sure enough as soon as we said, "kids go get ready for bed" the alert went off to take cover. We headed down to our well stocked shelter and got the news turned on. We could have sat in that room and never have known anything was even happening. Poor Elizabeth was crying. In the end it all blew through rather quickly and with no harm. I think she might have been more upset that she was the only one with her pajamas on and we all had our clothes on still from the day. The scenes of people emerging from their basements after a tornado in "non-street" clothes are a reality to us! The weather radio was on my nightstand and it never went off again and we all eventually fell asleep!

 They still love their Legos!