It's A Twister

Well, now that we finally have our internet back and Blogger is working, I can now put the post up about why we went without power and internet for most of the weekend!

On Friday night at almost 7 o'clock we were all sitting upstairs. Cadance was in her high chair eating and Bauer had miraculously fallen asleep on the couch. It started raining...then it started pouring...then it started hailing...and then it started hailing so hard that I literally thought it was going to break through our windows! Then, on top of all that, the wind started blowing so hard that everything on our balcony was sliding all over the place and slamming into the railings. The only thing I could think was that there had to be a tornado out there, I've never seen anything like that that wasn't a tornado! It was at about that moment that I yelled out for the fifth time, "Oh my gosh!!!" and ripped the tray off of Cadance's high chair, grabbed her and ran down the stairs with Matt close behind me carrying Bauer. We stood in the hallway at the bottom of the stairs and just watched it hailing/raining out of the little windows next to our front door. We were only down there for a few minutes and then it was over.

We opened the front door after the wind stopped so Bauer could look at the hail (which he was a little scared to do...I can't blame him). Then I went upstairs to take Cadance's bib off and wipe her down and this is what I found.
Our hail-covered balcony...
Leaves that could've been mod-podged to the side of our house and all the other houses in our neighborhood...
And the tree in our backyard blown over. Bauer was scared of this, too. Matt had to go stand next to the tree first before Bauer would go anywhere near it.

Then, along with everyone else on our street, we ventured out to see what other damage had been done.A recycling bin that crashed through the window of the house kitty-corner to us...
The tree (or at least one of the main culprits) that was responsible for our power going off during the middle of the storm...
A telephone pole completely broken in half, which is what half of the trees on our street looked like. Literally...
And the ones that weren't broken in half looked like this!
Cadance didn't know what to make of anything...
And, given Bauer's fascination with tornadoes, I think he thought it was a little exciting even though he was scared at the same time!
Matt took Cadance home while Bauer and I ventured out a little more to see what else had happened. We found this...

And, worst of all, this. I did talk to a man who knew that the guy who lived in this house had left it just a few minutes before the tree fell on it so, thankfully, nobody was hurt.

It's just crazy to think that all of this (and much, much more) damage happened in a matter of minutes! We feel really blessed that what happened to our house was so minimal and easily fixed. The pole holding the wires for our power connection had broken off of our house and the wires were laying on the ground. But, thanks to my electrician brother, that was completely fixed yesterday! Then, our neighbors asked us if we wanted help taking care of the tree in our backyard so, with the help of their two chainsaws, we'll probably have that taken care of tonight! I still can't believe this happened (and with no warning) but I'm so glad that we're all okay and, as far as I know, nobody else was hurt either!