What a wild night we had last night. It was a nice day yesterday, warm & sunny...early in the evening, we were planning to go to Applebees for dinner because it started to look like rain & we were guessing our grilling plans would get washed out. We got a call from Alishia (our babysitter) telling us that there were tornado warnings in Black Hawk County & we should rethink our dinner plans. We turned on the TV & began watching the weather reports. Scott loves storms so he went outside to watch it blow in. It was really windy & the clouds were rolling in. The tornado whistles began to blow & Scott quickly came into the house to tell us to get to the basement. I could tell by the tone of his voice he didn't like what he saw. Once we were all in the basement, he said that the wind stopped suddenly & everything became still...just like what happens before a tornado hits. We stayed in the basement & were able to hear weather reports. We found out that a tornado destroyed a neighboring town (Parkersburg) and severely damaged several other small towns nearby (New Hartford, Dunkerton & North Cedar Falls). As the evening went on, we were under several more tornado/thunderstorm warnings so we opted to sleep in the basement to be safe.
Today we learned that the small town of Parkersburg was pretty much destroyed. Over 220 houses were leveled and 21 businesses were lost too. The school is gone & there were 6 casualties. The National Guard & US Marshalls are now enforcing a curfew in the town & not letting anyone but residents into the town. The pictures we've seen from the news are absolutely amazing & so sad. This town is about 15 miles from us...way too close to home.
We did go out to north Cedar Falls (5 miles or so from our house) and saw many damaged homes, uprooted trees & debris everywhere. It was a somber sight to say the least. We had friends that had lots of downed (large) trees that came very close to hitting their house. Another friend saw the tornado touch down in the field across the street from them, but their property was spared. A co-worker of mine lost some buildings on her farm, but their house & they are fine. We saw an RV dealership that had RV's on their tops, completely overturned by the wind. WOW, what an amazing sight.
Today, we feel very lucky. We have our house intact, our family and friends are safe & we had no clean up in our neighborhood...a very different situation just minutes from here though. You can view pictures/videos on MSN or KWWL of the storm damage if you are curious (you can probably Google Parkersburg tornado too).
OTHER STUFF
- Jake won his soccer game on Tuesday night. I can't remember the score, but it was a good game. Jake had several great passes that lead to goals.
- We had a noon dismissal on Wednesday. I held Talent Show practice here for Jake's group. Allie went to a friend's for practice.
- Jake had another soccer game on Wednesday night. They won 8-3. Jake scored a goal & the team looked awesome.
- Thursday/Friday were pretty quiet days/evenings. Jake said that he got 95% on his end of the year math test (it covers the whole year). He got another 100% on spelling.
- I spent the day on Saturday cleaning the house & catching up on laundry. The kids played all day long. Allie was in the paper this week...she gets in the local paper about once a month!
- This week brings Talent Show practice for both groups, a bridal shower for me to attend, volunteering in Allie's classroom, a carnival meeting, a end of the year staff meeting, setting up the stage for next week's Talent Show and this weekend is the Cedar Valley Cup...a soccer tournament for Jake...we have 4 scheduled games...I sure hope the weather cooperates.
