The Storm!

 It started out as a perfect, sunny, beautiful day.  I took the kids to Denver for a primary temple activity.

 Afterwards I took the kids to the Zoo and got our zoo pass for the year.

 

Then we left to go home and that's when it all started.  

At first it was really windy and a little ways ahead of us it looked almost like there was a fire because it looked really smoky and brown but as I started to drive through it I found out it was a huge dust storm from all the wind. It was pretty scary and I couldn't see very well as I was driving.  Once I got out of that I could see clouds ahead that looked like it would rain.  

The closer I got to Greeley the stranger the clouds got and after living in Iowa I knew that they were not normal Thunderstorm clouds. They definitely looked like Tornado clouds.  

I called Troy, crying, and was so scared and not sure what to do.  He told me to just keep coming home.  

I was terrified. 

I know that if we had been home I would have not been as scared.  We could have all gone into the basement and I would have felt a lot safer.  

But something about being in our car with the kids, without Troy, and just driving straight into the scariest storm I had ever seen was terrifying to me.

Plus, Tornadoes have to be my worst fear. 

They only nightmares I ever have involve Tornadoes.

 We were  miles only 5 miles away from home when I got a couple of warnings on my phone saying that there was tornado sightings and to find shelter now.  

I was just going to drive as fast as I could home, but that is when the hail started. 

It was crazy and I thought it would break our windows, so we pulled off into a Walmart. 

I told the girls to put a blanket over their head, I grabbed the boys, and we all ran into Walmart.

We were soaked and the kids were all crying and then we were all being moved to the back of the store.  

I got a couple more of the warnings on my phone.  This time not only for Tornadoes but for flash flooding too.

 Waiting out the storm.

It stopped hailing but was still raining really hard but I just wanted to go home so I put all the kids in a shopping cart and I ran out to the van. I couldn't find my keys because it was raining so hard so I ran back inside.  I found the keys in my diaper bag and was running back to the van and the cart hit a crack or something and tipped over, sending all of the kids into the parking lot!  AAH! I got everyone back it and we FINALLY made it to the van.  By this time the kids were sobbing from bonked heads,

 I was crying and I just wanted to go home.

And they weren't kidding about the flash flooding. 

We went through a couple of really deep spots, one was so deep I didn't think the van would make it.  

We drove by a guy that had his car flooded so we ended up giving him a ride home.

Our house is on a hill so it was safe from flooding but it sure got some hail damage!

I knew it was going to be bad when I was driving through our neighborhood to get home and all the cars were full of dents and had broken windows, and so many houses had windows broken out and siding that was torn up. It looked like fall because the trees all lost a ton of leaves and they were all over the yards.

 

Thank goodness for House Insurance!  Our entire roof needs replaced too. 

 And our garden that was looking awesome looked like nothing was planted. 

The next day we found out that 6 tornadoes had touched down! There wasn't any damage, but still, so scary!

Our water table got this one big hole on the rim.  So weird! 

 Tyson's swing got a couple holes.

 Our water toys got pretty torn up.

 Our deck got pretty beat up with dents in the wood.  The previous owners had just redone the deck the week before we bought the house.

 Mason and I worked out in the yard one afternoon picking up all the pieces of siding all over the yard.  He worked for a good two hours and then wanted to swing.  It didn't take him long to fall asleep.

It has been pretty crazy this past week because we have had about 10 different construction companies A DAY stop at our house as well as those in our neighborhood, trying to get the job.  One company was even having a BBQ in the neighborhood giving out free food to get people to come talk to them.  On Wednesday morning I just decided to stop answering the door.  And all day long we just get people knocking, the kids looking out our front window at them, and me not answering. It will be nice to get all of this taken care of!