They're bigger in Texas

So we had a storm last night. And I can't even begin to recap the entire night, because the time line is so messed up in my head, probably because I didn't sleep much. I know the tornado was supposed to hit at 11:45 but the sirens started going off a little sooner than that, you know, to give you fair warning to get in a closet or basement or interior room or whatever, and around 11:42 Scott decided it was serious enough to go get all the kids rounded up.

We woke them up and put them all in our bed to see what would happen and Skylar was all WOOHOO PARTY IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT!! and Frosty was carrying on because I shut the bedroom door, forcing him to be in such CLOSE! PROXIMITY! to all of us. Then shortly after that the storm hit, and the hail was so hard and loud we were worried it would break the bedroom window. The sirens were wailing and the tv was beeping non-stop warnings across the bottom of the screen and there was a pop and the power went out.

This is the perfect example of why everyone needs to own a laptop computer. We turned it on and were able to watch noaa to track the storm. It occured to me later that I have no explanation as to how we were able to connect to the internet through our router and modem if there was no power going to them, and even now I'm stumped by that, but it worked. So we sat in the dark for a short period of time, and the storm got louder and louder and everyone started to get nervous and all of a sudden there was a HUGE! LOUD! BOOM!!! and the entire house shook. At that point I jumped off the bed and Scott jumped up from the floor and we started grabbing kids and it was all GO GO GO and right then the power came back on.

And we all kind of froze and listened and waited and stupid me, sitting in the middle of a terrible storm, said "So, do you think that was a transformer that blew or something?" and Scott was like "NO! That sounded like lightning hit the ground really close!" We waited and just as quickly as it hit it was over, and there was just rain and lots and lots of lightning, and then the tornado warning expired and the sirens shut off and we put the kids back in bed.

On the way back to our bedroom I looked out the sliding glass door into the backyard and you know what? What that sound was? It was our trampoline. The storm had picked it up, flipped it over, broke it in half, and threw it across the backyard into the side of the house. So it looked like this:

And Scott, bless his heart, was thinking back to how the weather channel said that even though the bad part was over we were still going to be having really strong wind gusts, and he was all "We probably should go out and try to flip it back over and lay it down." I saw two potential problems with this. 1. We are in the middle of a lightning storm, those poles are metal, and I'm not entirely sure at this point that it didn't already get struck by lightning once so there is no way in hell I'm touching it, and 2. They are reporting 65 mph wind gusts and about the time we get that thing up on it's side one is likely to come along and blow us clear to Mexico, and I don't speak good Spanish at all so there's no way in hell I'm touching it. I can't even say the name of the street we live on.

So we waited until this morning to take care of it. Sadly, this is what is left.

Of course the kids are traumatized. Owen and I jump on the trampoline every day. Most of the time Skylar jumps with us. And on the weekends we are all on it doing flips and playing. We are all crushed, but I have already called the insurance people and they are going to give us some money for it. There's a deductible of course, but getting something is better than nothing.

And you know, it would be bad enough if that was all, but then today was a beautiful clear blue sky kind of day but there were wind gusts. I'm not sure of the speed, but I think is was like 1000 mph or something and of course our trash can blew away again. I saw it in front of the neighbor's house and went to get my shoes and by the time I came back I couldn't even see it anymore. So I went running up the street and there's all kind of crap blowing around that was left over from the storm and about 5 houses up the street I found it (it's a good think Scott spray painted our house number on it otherwise we'd have to buy another one, our 5th) and I grabbed it and turned around and was almost decapitated by a KIDDIE POOL. And I wish I was joking, but I'm not. A plastic kiddie pool came flying up behind me out of nowhere while I was running down the street and when I turned around it almost knocked my freakin head off.

I called Scott and told him I was attacked by a kiddie pool. He laughed at first and then he said "You know, maybe you are a good candidate for medication."