April 15 .... Tornado

So... April 15th supposed to be a normal day right? I was getting off work early to go get a little shopping in before I had to pick up Eric from school, but oh no that didn't happen! Instead of getting off early to go shopping, I was getting off early to pick Eric up from School. My favorite weatherman, James Spann, was calling for severe weather on this day, expected to hit right after school.  I go get Eric, we go get some lunch, and are going to go pick JE up before the weather got bad and get back home. While we were eating lunch and watching the weather, it became apparent that a super bad storm was headed towards "Taylorville!" Did I hear that right? Did he actually just say the name of my community?? The one I had told Eric to always listen for if there was bad weather?? OH Crud!! I think we will stay at mom and dads! So we stayed, not realizing that the storm would cross through town and head that way! (Hey, but at least I had help with the boys!) My brother Jason and his puppy Maggie came by to wait out the storm with us!! about 30minutes before it hit, we had a craving for some Pillsbury Cookies, so Jason went and got them and we cooked them and had a great time eating them!! Still watching James, he starts using the tower camera's in Tuscaloosa to look for a tornado... when all of a sudden, oh my, there it is!! I hear James say "There's the tornado on the ground. We have reports that a large tornado is on the ground in Magnolia Park"  Seriously, my first thought was, Magnolia Park?? I have friends there!! I quickly sent them some FB messages to make sure they were okay! I thought, yeah that's close to my house, but they keep referring to Shelton State and that's south of my house, so should be okay. Dad has pulled out his police scanner and we are anxiously listening to hear the path as a police officer radio's dispatch to say that it is passing through the intersection of McFarland and Skyland and that it blew out the windows in his patrol car. Then I see James has listed times when the tornado should be different places... I see 3:49 Holt. I panic because that is way too close to mom and dad's house for me! By this time, my poor eldest is shaking because he is so scared! I take him in the bathroom and we stay in our safe place for a little while. Amazingly my parents never lost power, which is odd because when the wind blows in just the right way, they usually lose it! It was just God looking out for us! I did not realize until a week later how close the tornado actually came to their house! Then the damage reports started to come in. We stayed where we were for a while and the hubby called and told me that our neck of the woods was a wreck and that I probably could not make it home right now and to stay put. When I finally got home, it was a wreck everywhere around where we lived. This is what I found at our house:

Eric's trampoline! Our neighbor said she thought it was going to go over the fence into her yard, but it got hung up in the tree.

Our fence crushed my rose bush, but I think it will survive!

Hiya Neighbor!! Eric's thought to this was "At least I can go get my toys back when they go over the fence!"

This peeks into our other neighbors yard!

I know it is really hard to see, but there is a little roof damage!

The trampoline after we flipped it back over! Who wants to jump first??

This is one of our neighbor's house

Another neighbor's fence is gone

Mangled Swing Set

There were lots of trees down everywhere, roads impassable, but thankfully our neighborhood seemed to have the least amount of damage. We just simply don't have a lot of trees and we are in a small neighborhood. We have done a lot of clean up and are now waiting on the Insurance Adjusters to let us know what we need to do... patiently waiting because I know that there are others who are worse off than us. Hope everyone out there has survived the crazy spring storms... I hear there are more on the way.

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