Storms

April 26 we had multiple storms and tornados come through our area in one day. We were woken up at 6 am to the sound of tornado sirens and then heard them throughout the rest of the day, until the storms took out all the power in the area and they could no longer go off. There were 600,000 people without power by the end of the day. I had never seen storm clouds like that before and so close to us. We were so blessed that we had no major damage. Power went out Wednesday night and didn't come back on again until Monday morning. You don't realize how much we rely on electricity until we don't have it. I was glad we had done laundry a few days before so we had clean clothes to wear. And we were blessed that we had a gas heater so we could still take hot showers, unlike so many. We needed to eat all the food out of our freezer and fridge that we could, so we built a fire to cook it since we didn't have a grill. I was so glad we had some coals and lighter fluid in the garage because the lines at the few grocery stores that were open wrapped around the store and to the outside and we would've been waiting for hours. Below is a picture of the fire that we made and we camped out in our backyard. Thank goodness we had great weather for a few days so we could sit out and eat and then look at the stars at night on our deck. You can see so many more stars when no one has power. School and work were canceled because the city didn't have power, so Andrew and I just hung out at home. I think the kitties enjoyed it! On Sunday we went and volunteered at neighborhoods where trees were down and houses were leveled. We spent the day cutting down trees and moving debris to the side of the road. We saw a trampoline wrapped around the top of a power pole and someones mattress a half mile from their house. The power of the tornados is hard to comprehend and it is by God's protection that so many survived, and their stories are unbelievable considering what they experienced. There were soo many people out helping and that was encouraging to see. There is still a lot of work to be done.

Here's a pic of our growing garden. Yeah! I keep praying that it will produce lots of yummy veggies, and then next year we can make it even bigger.

Andrew leaves Wednesday morning for a rocket launch in Virginia and Thursday afternoon I pickup mom from the airport. She is coming to stay with me and hang out while Andrew is gone so it'll be lots of fun.