Bad Storms

"Be careful what you wish for," my son said as we were all enclosed in my bedroom, including all the dogs and cats.

"Whaddaya mean?" I asked.  

"A day without electronics?" he smirked.

My kids can make me roll my eyes a lot around here.  He was referring to my suggestion that I recently presented, that was as a family to toss our electronics in a basket and purposely do things the "old-fashioned" way for a night.  Did you hear them whine all the way at your house?  I got the idea from a book I am reading right now titled "Crazy Busy" and you will soon be reading a review.

Anyway, the photo above was taken just as the storms started rolling in.  It was fast.  The power went out very quickly after the high winds (some as high as 85 mph) started pushing through here.


We gathered everyone, cell phones, flashlights, camper lights, and a jug of water, and hunkered down in my bedroom (most central).  Now remember we do not have a cellar or basement here, so I often go into "freak out" mode when a storm this bad rolls through.  Not this time.  We were prepared.  We are sort of sick and tired of it really.

I honestly thought the big barn would come down in this storm.  We even retreated to our "safe room" which is my bedroom closet (block walls).  Now, if you've seen my closet, it's packed with crafting supplies, so we had very little room to squeeze in there.  Of course, at that moment, I'm thinking, "man I gotta clean this up better."

As soon as it passed, the barns and animals were checked on, and all was okay.  Miraculously, okay.  However, that is not the case in a nearby town.  Emergency crews were first called to a house down.  This town suffered more - another house down and a duplex destroyed, power lines down, trees down etc. Thank goodness, no one was killed.

Luckily, our power was only out for about 3 hours this time.  I was surprised, considering the widespread damage these storms caused.

What we'll do to prepare better for the next storm:  keep newspapers for dogs who need to do their business and may have to resort to the garage or bathroom, more flashlights, more water on supply, keep music bullet speakers charged (this came in handy to connect to my son's MP3 player, which connected to a radio station so we could listen on the storm situation), keep small emergency food in my nightstand (in case I can't walk past the glass doors and windows to get to the kitchen to get food), and invest in a generator (we could have used it over 3 times this year alone).

On a good note, my son and Hubby put the outside Christmas lights up over the weekend.  It was perfect weather on Saturday.   

Update:  Several of these storms were confirmed tornadoes, including the one in the nearby town, not far from us.