Tornado in January?! Only in Indiana

I will preface this post by saying that we are all fine and that all things considered, we faired very well following a confirmed tornado that touched down in our neighborhood last night. We are extremely blessed and I cannot tell you how many times I prayed to God last night, thankful for my family and our safety. Here is what happened...

Dean was at work last night and called at about 7:05 p.m. to ask if I was watching TV. We were not, we were playing in Ben's room. Dean suggested that I take the boys to the basement as a big storm with high winds was heading our way. I grabbed a flashlight, some blankets, books, and the phone and the boys and I headed downstairs. We have a finished basement, so it really wasn't a big deal to be downstairs. I turned on the television, saw the huge line of storms coming our way and called my parents and sister to check on them. As I was talking to Michelle, the power suddenly went out (this was approximately 7:20 p.m.) and I heard a very loud noise, which I presumed to be wind and 2 loud thuds, which I think were our neighbors basektball goal slamming to the ground and our grill doing the same! As quickly as the storm hit, it seemed to pass.

It was about this time that I also discovered that my cell phone had very little battery left. I was able to get a hold of Dean and my family and let them know that we were ok and the storm was over. Ben was very brave and we pretended we were astronauts in outer space and made shadow puppets on the ceiling. Ben, Joe, and I read several Scooby Doo books by flashlight and then Ben fell asleep and I nursed Joe in the candlelight...it was actually kind of peaceful. A couple of my neighbors came to check on us since they could not reach us by phone and it was when I went upstairs to answer the door that I realized the damage the storm had caused. It was pretty remarkable to see all the debris in our backyard. My neighbors sustained much more damage then we did so it was discomforting to look at their house and wonder what ours must look like.

Dean arrived home finally at about 10:00 p.m. and was shell shocked at the state of our street. After seeing the "war zone" on his way home, he felt bad that he had not come home sooner. We contemplated spending the night at Dean's mom's house, but since the boys were both asleep we opted to stay home. I thought sure the power would be restored quickly.

I was wrong. When Joe woke up at 1:00 a.m. and I checked on him, his little hands were icecicles and it was down to 60 degrees in our house with still no power. We decided to pack up and head to Oma's. We camped out in the family room and both boys did a great job and slept pretty well. Dean and I wish we could say the same, but it was nice to be warm at least!

Our power was finally restored at about 2:00 p.m. today. The house got down to 48 degrees so we were really happy we had decided to take the boys to Oma's house...I will be quicker to make that decision should we ever be in this position again in the future. As I said, all in all we faired pretty well. As the pictures show, we had a ton of garbage in our yard (unfortunately Wednesday is "garbage day" in our neighborhood so many of our neighbor's had already put out their trash and a lot seemed to land in our yard!). It was actually kind of funny to see all the trash up in the trees!

I am really glad that the storm passed and the damage was not worse than it was. There were several huge 40+ year old trees completely uprooted on our street, many windows blown out, shingle and siding damage to many houses, and one neightbor's detached 2-car garage was actually shifted off of it's foundation, but no one was hurt to our knowledge and that, quite obviously, is the most important thing. As I said, we are counting our blessings today and are so grateful that all the damage can be cleaned up and replaced. Let the clean up begin...actually Dean already has all of the garbage picked up (6 trashbags full). He is so good!

Trash in our backyard

Our neighbor's flagpole

Tree down the street

Trash in the trees

Playing with the boys right before the storm