Hail of a night...

This spring has brought pretty crazy weather around here. When Danielle was here, I told her I had not seen storms like those here and around us since we moved here. Our family was getting ready to head out to Atlanta last Wednesday so we could catch a flight to California on Thursday. We were under tornado warnings all day, so I called mike and told him I didn't want to drive down that night, but get up really early and drive after the warnings were gone. His response was, "I am getting off early, let's go ahead and drive before the worst of it hits."

So, off we went. I think I prayed every minute of the four hour drive (which normally would take three) There was debris flying everywhere. We were surrounded by trees on either side of I 75, and I kept waiting for a tornado to come up over the trees.

At one point, after we had driven into Georgia we heard the emergency alert system on the radio say, "Take cover if you are in Rome, GA. A tornado has just touched down." About a minute later, we passed the turn off to Rome! Mike kept saying, "I am so glad we did this tonight." My thought was, "you get me safely to our hotel and I will agree with you."

When we were a half hour outside of Atlanta, I got a phone call from our neighbor asking if we were safe. After I told her, "yes," she said, "ok. The good news here is your ouse is still standing. The bad news is we had a terrible hail storm and your house is damaged and your car is probably totaled." That is what they knew at night.

The next morning, my neighbors were out boarding up our windows that were blown all the way through. Friends came over and vacuumed water out of our car, rescued music sheets, cleaned up glass, and cleaned up the house. We flew to California!

Once we got to CA, we received pictures of the damage awaiting us when we got back. After reading about Tuscaloosa, AL. I felt thankful for the minimal damage done to my house, and for the amazing people in my life who jumped in to help us out.