Birthdays, Tornadoes, and Toads

Part 1 Tornadoes

For months we have been planning to go to Dallas for Kirsten's birthday and to go to the American Girl store. She didn't want a party or anything other than this. Since Max had an appointment in Dallas last Friday morning we decided to head down there Thursday night. We had heard a storm was headed toward Tulsa so we thought it would be nice to get out of here and evade the hail and tornadoes. Not that I'm scared in fact I actually like storms, especially when I'm in the comfort of my own home. Anyway, Kirsten got off the bus and we get in the car to go. We had to drop Marpie off at the Kennel first and then we headed down through Tulsa. Traffic in Tulsa was actually really bad. I guess people were trying to get home before the storm hit. The whole way we kept hearing that a really bad storm was almost to Sapulpa and South Tulsa. As we drove past Sapulpa we thought we were in the free and clear and were feeling pretty good. Keep in mind that when I say we, I mean me and the kids. Jonathan was in Canada for work and was going to fly down on Friday to meet us there.

So as we continue to head south; and the weather continues to get worse and worse. The people on the radio were only talking about the weather advisories for Tulsa and so I had no idea what was going on except for that it was raining really hard and it was hailing. I pulled over twice to try to get out of the hail. I see storm chasers on the side of the road all excited with their cameras. I do not like to drive in heavy rain so I'm freaking out a little. Especially because it's dark at this point. Kirsten was very nervous, Colton didn't know what was going on, and luckily Max was asleep (he has a really disturbing high pitched scream that probably would've put me over the edge). I guess my mom and Jonathan had been trying to call and warn me but my phone wasn't working.

The second time we stopped I was looking at my phone to find a hotel. I was not going to drive in that weather for another 2 hours. For some reason my phone still wasn't working. Which actually ended up being a miracle because I sat in that gas station trying to get it to work for a good 10 minutes. I decided to get back on the road. a few minutes later I went through a town called Tushka. If you've seen the news lately you've probably seen pictures of this little town. Just about 10 minutes before I got there a tornado had made it's way up the road I was driving on. There were overturned semis, trees down everywhere, houses destroyed...I have never seen anything like it. Even though I probably could have gotten all three of my kids out and in a ditch and that we would've been fine, I cannot even say how grateful I am that I didn't have to do that. I seriously feel so blessed.

On our way back home we went through this town again and it was amazing to see so many people working on getting people's roofs fixed and houses back together. I'm so amazed at the kindness people show during crazy scary events like this.