Severe Weather

We have had some totally crazy weather here lately.  Thankfully nothing that has caused real damage but still scary for us.  We had two days in a row with really severe weather and had an actual tornado touch down and hit just north of our house.  I'm also very thankful that we have a basement to hide out in.  Luckily Paul was home that night, even though we knew that the tornado was probably going to miss us it was much less scary to have him home and in the basement with us.  We did puzzles and played with toys to keep the kids entertained.  I had never experienced weather like this, when we first started getting tornado warnings it seemed weird,, it was sunny and the wind wasn't even blowing.  And then in just a couple minutes dark clouds moved in, the rain started and it began blowing.  The next day, at about the same time we heard the sirens go off again and saw funnel clouds in the sky one of which was just a few blocks from our house.

The rest of the week we had thunderstorms and lots of rain and wind.  Almost every night I was woken up by huge crashes of thunder.  Last year we were in a drought and this year we are the other extreme, flooding and way too much water.  

On memorial day we woke up to more stormy weather.  I was watching our trampoline out the window and noticed it was getting blown pretty hard but the stakes were holding it down.  Plus I figured we had had stronger winds earlier in the week and thought the tramp would be fine.  I looked out the window less then 5 minutes later and the tramp was completely gone.  I ran outside and couldn't see it anywhere.  I yelled for Paul and he ran down the street looking for it.  We found it about seven house down in someone else's backyard.  It tumbled across seven backyards and 4 fences.  Luckily it didn't do any damage to anyone else's property.  Paul and I then disassembled it and hauled it home.  We need to fix or get a couple new poles and a new enclosure to make it usable again but I have such mixed feelings about setting it up again.  Our kids love it and spends hours each day on it but I'm not sure I can handle worrying about it blowing away again.  

This what was left of the trampoline when I looked out the window.  

This whole living in tornado country is definitely a new experience for us.  And we hate the sounds of the tornado sirens.  They test them on the first Saturday of the month at noon and they went off last Saturday and my kids freaked out it took a few minutes to calm them down and convince them it was only a test and not an actual warning.