Stormy Day

Get comfy while I relate the story of my day...
Around lunch time (first day of school), an announcement was made that recess would need to be inside due to rain. At this time, I had third graders-a class containing a student that has a history of losing control during storms and our new special needs deaf student. Another new student raised her hand and politely mentioned that it sure sounded like big thunder outside. I explained that it was not thunder, but the elephant feet of the first graders directly above my room for recess. (Specials classrooms are the interior corridor of the school with no windows to the outside and the "all-purpose" room is above us.) Right after the explanation, the power went out. My room was pitch black. I quickly did the "attention chant" and told everyone to stay put as I made my way to the desk for the flashlight. About 8 seconds later, the lights came back on and Christian was all the way across the room at the front door preparing to bolt. This amazing boy made it past me, my music stand, and his interpreter in the darkest of darks and boy was he scared! We got him calmed down and I proceeded to get out an LED crystal decoration on the shelf and turn it on for the kids to see, pledging that I would try to keep it on in the future in case it happened again. Crazy thing was, the storm anxiety student stayed calm and quiet the whole time; we think because he couldn't see it out any window to know it was bad. I obviously had no clue it was bad either. This was going on during AM kindergarten pick-up and there were parents that called from their cars claiming to have seen a funnel cloud. Were there any warnings on the office weather radio? Nope.

Jump ahead to this afternoon when the custodian (who is our friend and neighbor) visits my room to let me know that our neighborhood "is a disaster zone" but our house and his are okay. He related the specifics as he understood them from his wife so I knew going home that we were in for some heavy duty stuff. Andy was already on bus route so I didn't want to mess with contacting him through his office (I'm sure the radio traffic on the school buses was crazy today anyway!). So we left school and high-tailed it to get Hanna and try to beat Andy home.

Yep...a mess! Trees were uprooted, relief crews were around, neighbors were standing in the streets, the whole nine yards. The neighbor across the street from us had 2 trees fall on his house--major structural damage. Another neighbor in our circle had a tree fall on their car. We had a tree topped and doubled over, leaving it hanging directly above our driveway. (hard to see in the picture, but all that canopy should be erect!) It was low enough that it touched the car as we hurried past while crossing our fingers! Lord, what to do with Andy's school bus!!! We feel incredibly lucky that it wasn't much worse. As Andy slowly pulled into the neighborhood, cars and people scrambled out of the way and our neighbor was so kind to let him park the bus in his driveway. So we began moving the large branches and cleaning up the brush, wondering how long we will be without power, when another doozy of a storm moved in. Lightning and thunder that made the kids on edge and all we could do was watch. The poor guy across the street had to close up shop and his roof had all kinds of holes in it.

More flooding ensued, more branches fell, but that mangled tree top stayed put. As we were making plans to pack up and go stay with the in-laws for supper and maybe all night, the power came on. So life is somewhat back to normal for us. The trusty tree service that we've used in the past just came out to quote us on the removal. They can save the tree by taking only the top and damaged branches so that's helping the pocketbook. $375 is much better than $900!

In other news, Joel has a bball practice tomorrow and that was a surprise, but it'll all be good! His first game is Sunday--another surprise! Well, gotta get the kiddos in bed after a crazy day... We are all thankful tonight!