It Was A Dark And Stormy Night...

If you are my friend on Facebook, you have probably noticed that I have been using the same pictures on my blog as in my Mobile Uploads Album. I know that is probably boring for my family, who will want to see updated pictures and not the same ol' pictures posted on Facebook. I will get better at uploading more pictures from my camera but it has been out of commission for about two weeks. Jeremy accidentally took my camera/computer cable with him last week to the Gulf coast instead of his iPod charger. He assures me that he has it...somewhere. Until I get it back, mobile uploads that have been imported to Facebook and then downloaded onto my computer and blog will have to suffice. I don't have the application on my phone that allows me to upload pictures straight to my blog. Sigh...maybe the iPhone 4S is somewhere in my future.

Anyway, it was a dark and stormy night last night and mommy was scared to death! Let me explain:

I have had 3 really bad storm experiences in my life that have affected me deeply. The first bad experience was at my daycare center, The Learning Block. If you attended The Learning Block, you will remember that it was situated on a street with several other businesses and backed up to a very deep ditch. I remember the morning of this really bad storm. My mom was about to drop Brittany and me off at the day care after we were able to turn right at the four way stop. While we sat in our car at the stop sign, my sister and I noticed that the stop sign had almost completely broken free of its screws and was waving in the wind. We could feel our car shaking. We lived in a very flat part of Texas and fast, straight-line winds were the norm when a storm blew into town, so my mom felt no hesitation at dropping us off at daycare and continuing on her way to work. A few hours after we had been at daycare, the tornado sirens went off. All the teachers gathered all the children into the hallway and closed off the doors to the classrooms. I remember one of the teachers handing me a baby to hold while she held on to one of the classroom doors so that the suction did not force it open. After the danger passed, a huge thunderstorm passed through with a flash flood warning in effect. This is where the deep ditch comes into the story. It rained so much that the ditch filled up with water that started to flood the day care. The teachers in our daycare loaded us up on daycare buses and called the police to help evacuate our daycare center. I rode with my sister in the back of a police car to the police station where my dad picked us up an hour or two later. All the children from the daycare sat in one of the courtrooms while we waited for parents and guardians to arrive. The daycare center was closed for a few days to clean up the damage. I was only 4, but I remember how scary it was.

The 2nd really bad storm experience happened when I was in about 4th grade. During a thunderstorm, a straight-line wind hit our house and tore off the roof on half of our house. Here is the kicker: my sister and I were sitting on my bed in my bedroom when it happened. Imagine being a child and realizing that the roof that was protecting you against the storm just a second ago is no longer there. I still remember what we were doing. Brittany and I were coloring in our The Little Mermaid coloring books. We heard what we thought was a crack of thunder (it was actually our roof being torn off) Brittany immediately jumped off the bed and ran into the living room where my dad was looking out the windows yelling, "Oh my gosh! I think Frances's roof just got blown off!" Frances was our neighbor. He didn't realize that the roof he saw flying in the wind was ours. I still had my ceiling in my room, but with the roof not protecting it, water started pouring through it immediately. My mom had just redecorated my room in cream and pink roses and had done a quilted accent wall with pink and cream striped fabric. We were able to salvage a lot, but my quilted walls were ruined. That was a scary experience.

My 3rd and final really bad storm story happened the summer after 7th grade. My family always vacationed at the same destination year after year. We always rented a spot at Crider's campground on the Frio River. My dad would haul our camper to Crider's every summer and we would camp out near the river. This particular year was interesting because a momma cat at our house had just delivered a litter of six kittens and then had died. My mom and sister and I were in the process of bottle feeding those kittens. We took them with us on vacation that year. One night, a thunderstorm came through the area with flash flood warnings in effect. Unfortunately, there was a huge amount of rain that caused a dam to burst upriver. All the excess water flooded the river and our campsite. It was about 3 a.m. when some other camper finally knocked on our camper door to let us know that our camper was about to float away with us in it. Our camp site that year was near a deep ravine that connected to the river. My mom got all the kids (us, my cousins, and the kittens) into her car while my dad used his truck to try and pull out the camper, and it was no small camper! (40 feet long) By the time he was able to work on it, water was over a foot deep in the camper and my dad had no choice but to wrap a chain around the hitch and hope that he could pull it out. He finally did, but when the water receded the next day, we saw a scar in the dirt that was about a foot deep where the hitch had dug into the earth. We were lucky to have almost all our possessions intact. My sister and I had nightmares about storms for years after that. I think that storm affected me the worst because I had always felt safe in our vacation spot. I felt like nothing could invade that protection. But weather is to be respected. It, like God, shows no favoritism.

Fast forward to last night. It was about 2:30 a.m. when the sirens went off. I ran to Ava's room noticing on the way that the sky was almost like day because of the massive amounts of lightning. The thunder was continual. Ava slept on my shoulder until I got her into our bedroom. Jeremy was trying to look up the storm on his phone. We had no idea if the storm was near us or if it was in another area of the county and we would be unaffected. Ava woke up and blabbered away in her gibberish jargon. We found that the storm was not going to affect the cities of Tuscaloosa or Northport. Jeremy and I kept Ava with us until the warning expired, then fed her a bottle and let her go back to sleep. 

I  thought of families on April 27th, who had babies ripped from their arms during the tornado. I don't know what I would have done if that had been the case for us. Ava is so precious to me. I worried about my life too. If I was not pregnant, my life would just be my life. But my life now represents two. If something happens to me, then Greta would not survive. If something happened to me, I know that Jeremy would take wonderful care of Ava. But, I feel scared when I think of my unborn daughter not being viable yet. These are grave things to think about. 

It was a scary night for us, as it was for many others. I was so grateful that the storm passed us by this time. I hurt for the ones who lost loved ones and who suffered damage, but I thank God that he kept us safe last night. I am so glad that Ava had no idea what was going on. She talked and laughed the whole time. When we finally put her back to bed, she talked to herself for a few minutes and played with her feet. She finally cuddled up with her grossie (her giraffe that is completely gross from her sucking its ears) and went to sleep. I prayed again last night that God would just give us enough time to get Ava if a tornado was going to hit us. I don't care about this house or the things inside. I just want our family intact.

I did not mean for this post to get so heavy. It just kind of ended up that way! I find that when I start transferring my thoughts from brain to blog, there is a lot more there than I initially thought! To lighten the mood, I want to post a picture of Ava after the tornado warning expired, before she settled down to sleep. Yes, it is a picture that has already been posted to Facebook!

I apologize for the large bars on the screen. They only appear in pictures!