Storm!

I had a solid week of weirdness..it all started with a storm last Friday. Hubby and I were out working on the pool, the kids were at the in-laws, and a storm blew up. I mean a huge ass storm that shook the house. We could see it coming across the fields, and hubby is a volunteer fireman, so we heard all the storm watchers yelling out over the radio, that there were tornado's on the ground. We took off running into the house, after grabbing a few things to keep them from blowing away. It hit HARD! I grabbed my Lorazapam and popped one in my mouth. I was shaking..and near tears. My kids were not home. I couldn't stand not knowing exactly what they were doing, or knowing if they were safe. I never wanted my kids with me so bad in my life. Here is a picture of some of the storm clouds from the front porch. It's blurry because I was shaking too hard to hold the camera still

and another shot. Look at those horribly ugly clouds and the rain coming down. The clouds are nearly sitting on the ground.

I do NOT handle storms well. I have always been terrified of them. As a child, when it stormed, I would sleep in the bathtub. Even as an adult, when I still lived with Mom, if it was storming, I would go get in bed with her to sleep. I'm talking, I did this just a few days before I got married. I'm a wimp.


When it was over, Hubby stepped out in the front yard and says "Your tree is gone!" Huh?? What tree?

That would be my willow tree. At first I was like, "Thank God we survived", then I realized that the tree had fallen on my swing. My adorable father in law hand carved that swing for me about 6 years ago, and it is my prized possession. He tried to copy his swing that he paid quite a bit of money for, and accidentally made it the most comfortable swing to sit in, EVER. It just fits your back and legs, at just the perfect curves and angles...and he made it just for me. It's very special. When I realized the willow was on the swing, I started to cry thinking my swing was gone too.

The swing in under there somewhere. It provide the perfect amount of shade in the evening to sit on the swing, and the wrought iron table and chairs nestled under the canopy and was a fun place to sit and enjoy nature and hide.

It was a pretty good sized tree and about 30 feet high. Look in the broken off part, you can see a piece of aluminum foil that the wind blew up inside the trunk. I don't know where it came from, but it was NOT coming out. But look...do you see my swing?

The top braces on the A-frame are broken...but the swing is fine. Yippeee! I mourned the tree and shed a tear. It was one of the first trees we planted on this property, after we set the house. The swing has now survived it's second tree attack. A few years ago, the pear tree was hit by lightening and fell on the swing. Thank goodness...since had the swing not been there, it would have fell on our electrical box. Good news is, Hubby has fixed my swing back good as new, and it is now sitting in the shade of what's left of the pear tree.
We went into town to check out the Farm Plant Hubby works at, and the clouds looked ominous again.


They never did more than sprinkle a bit, then we headed to the in-laws house to get the kids. I wanted my babies! They were fine, excited about the storm, but safe and sound. Then the sun tried to come out. It turned the sky golden , that turns the earth this beautiful hue that looks like everything has been washed in liquid gold. I LOVE this. It's eerily beautiful.



Then the sun started to go down and the gold turned to pumpkin orange.


Then God finished off the horribly scary day with this breath taking sunset


It almost made it worth the storm. ALMOST. We were very lucky. Many places further south of us was hit with numerous tornadoes and a lot of flooding. Our damage was caused by straight line winds of about 80mph.

I will post about the rest of the week from hell later.