Wild weather

We had some crazy weather last week. It's not really crazy by Texas standards, but for those of us not used to growing up with tornado sirens, it's pretty crazy. Last week, strong storms with the capability of producing hail and tornadoes were supposed to move through late Wednesday night into early Thursday morning. You hear this kind of forecast all the time out here, so it's not that alarming . . . until it actually happens.

About 4:00 Thursday morning, I heard Noah's monitor beeping, and I realized the power was out. Five seconds later, Luke was in my room. I let him get in bed with me (Gary was, of course, not here), and we were amazed by the constant lightning outside. Not five minutes later, we heard the tornado siren. In retrospect, I realize I should have gotten Noah up and gone into Luke's bathroom (which is the interior most room in our house), but I just wasn't sure what to do. It's hard to make those kinds of decisions at 4:15 a.m. Luke was pretty scared; I was pretty scared, too. We stayed in bed and waited (I did a lot of praying, too.) Not long after the siren went off, the storm started to weaken and move out. By 5:00, it was all over, and, luckily, we never saw a tornado. The power stayed off till about 7:15 that morning which wasn't too bad considering thousands of people still didn't have power on Friday.

I read in the paper this weekend that there was a tornado in Allen which is only a few minutes south of us. Some of my friends did take cover when they heard the siren; others didn't which made me feel like less of a negligent mother for just lying in bed shaking. Next time I hear that siren, we'll be taking cover. Ah . . . spring time in Texas!