Where did that come from?

Tuesday I spent the morning playing outside with the kids. It was beautiful. At 1:00 I took Preston to school and put Brayden down for a nap. I noticed that it was getting darker outside around 2:00 but didn't think much of it because I knew we were suppose to get some rain. About 2:30 I was watching something we had recorded and heard a funny noise. I asked Trent if it was the sirens and he said it was just the TV. A few minutes later I told him to look outside and sure enough the tornado sirens were going off.

Tornados are rare in February so we didn't think too much about it but turned on the news. We were shocked to see that a tornado was just a few miles away and the kids schools were on lock down. I hurried and called my sister to make sure she knew her kids would be back at the school. Then our power went out and after a few tries I finally got here on the phone. She immediately asked if we were in our safe spot. I told her not yet and she got more anxious said it was heading right for us and we needed to get a helmet on the baby and get to our spot fast. As I was running around trying to grab what we needed she was getting more and more anxious telling me it was getting closer. She started yelling that it was at the cross streets of the kids school almost to our house and then my phone went dead. I ran outside and yelled at Trent to get in the house. He looked at me and said "we're fine, I just saw and heard it go by", yes he stood out on our deck and watched the tornado go through the neighborhood across the street from us. We just stood there for a minute in shock and then ran to the car.

As we headed for the school to make sure the kids were okay it was all a bit unreal. The first moment I felt panic was when we turned the corner towards the school and all we saw were emergency vehicles and flashing lights. As we got a little further, I was relieved to see that the vehicles were not at the school. As we got closer to them we were shocked at what we saw. There were trees everywhere, fences blown down, walls and roofs torn off houses and power lines down.

The school was packed when we got there but the administration did a fantastic job. They knew exactly where all of the kids were and got us to them quick. The kids were a bit shaken and scared but did a great job of staying calm. We had planned on picking them up and heading home when the school announced that another storm was 10 minutes away and was on the same path. For a minute I had no idea what to do. We called some friends that have a basement and were not in the path of the storm and made plans to head there. It was a bit scary on the way over because traffic was horrible and the wind had picked up again and the golf ball hail was hitting the car. We were all just hoping the window wouldn't break. We finally got there and started to relax a bit. The kids began to play and that really helped take their minds off what had happened. Our friends graciously let us stay the rest of the evening and made dinner for us. We are so grateful for their kindness.

We headed home at 6:30 and still didn't have power so we ran to Wal-mart and bought battery powered lights for each of the kids and then headed back home for our camp out. About 9:30 the power came back on and we were very relieved.

The next morning we drove around to see the areas that had been hit. In the neighborhood across from us about 54 homes were damaged and 6 home were destroyed. The neighborhood across from the school had many homes damaged. Just east of us several businesses were destroyed. In Edmond about 150 structure were damaged. We have friends and ward members who suffered damage in the storm and feel very bless that we had no damage. This is definitely the closest call that we have had since moving to Oklahoma and hope it remains that way.

This is the neighborhood across from us. There were houses that were completely destroyed but they are in the backside of the neighborhood and it is gated:

This is the neighborhood across the street from the kids school:

These are the businesses that are just east of our house: