"this is not safe!"

April 26, 2011 we had tornado warning after tornado warning. I remember quite a few watches, but very few warnings and not 6 or 7 in a single day. When one of the storms came directly toward us, we were in the basement theater room, watching the show from the door. Allen kept going to the window and even going out on our deck to video (too dark to really see). I stood at the room door watching, and the kids stayed behind me, peeking around to look now and then. During the ordeal, Jared was the most animated. He collected all pillows, blankets and even couch cushions into the room. When I went over to the window a few times and ventured onto the deck once he said, "mom, I expected that of dad, but not you!". When we called the kids to run over quick to the window to take a better look, he was the one that came with couch cushion in hand. When the storm was over and we were all out side checking out the hail, we heard this rushing water sound-it sounded like a river. We told the kids to come with us to check it out and started leaving our yard, Jared came, but giggled in a nervous way, "this is not safe!"

We had planted our first ever garden just a week before. We will see what survives.

One interesting thing was the steam that came off the hail and the strong smell of pine that night. It made more sense the next day when we saw all the foliage on the ground.

Our damage was minimal: garden, all the bushes and trees got a good trimming. Down spouts are dinged up. One front light glass is broken. All in all we feel pretty lucky. Our hearts go out to those that were not so lucky. The boys are headed to Chattanooga with our church this Saturday to help out with the clean up.