A day late

So, most of you probably know that Saturday was suppose to be "Judgement Day." The rapture was predicted to come, by Harold Camping, and as most "predicted" nothing really happened. I'd have to disagree though, I did start my period on May 21, 2011. That is a pretty huge sign to me of something wrong with this world....

So last night as my family and I, along with the missionaries, kept running back and forth to the cellar, we realized Mr. Camping must have been off by just one measly day. Darn predictions.....you just can never get them right!

But seriously, last night was CRAZY! We knew a storm was coming because of the weather forecast but it is really weird to see clear skies and within minutes, it turn to dark. In fact, when all was said and done and the sun came back out again, Brigham seriously asked if we had been up all night during the storms and wondered if it was now morning. In his defense, this storm lasted over 4 hours. Storms are usually fast moving but this storm just seemed to hover over us.

We were eating dinner when the first set of tornado sirens went off. Last time this happened I was so scared that we just ran in the cellar with ourselves and a flashlight. One of our neighbors came over with a backpack pull of supplies and I felt sheepish as this "Mormon" left all her 72 hour backpacks back in her home! I was determined to be prepared this time and so off we went with our comfort items. Within minutes we had golf ball sized hail. For quite some time the sirens would go off, we would think we were safe, go back inside, only to have them go off again. This went on for a while and so we just stayed in the cellar. The boys did amazing. Hyrum was scared at first but by the end, we were calm....even through the VERY loud thundering.
Here we are in our yard after the sirens....well, one of the many times we thought they were done.

My poor flowers!

We live on 6th and Spring. This is Spring street in front of the property we live on. While in the cellar, this is what we looked out on. If you look at the left side of the picture you will see a tiny tot slide. We watched, from the cellar, as it and other toys washed away down our little street "river."

I have to remind myself to let my boys be boys. So when the sirens were off and they went straight for the water, I thought, what the heck! Let them play. Hyrum was cautious, of course, and just stayed close to Daddy. Before playing, I let the boys know of the places I did NOT want them. If you look at the second to last picture you will see where it picks up speed and I wanted them no where near that. They could go in the standing water and that was it. They of course, had a blast.....until I turned my head for a second. Brigham started walking over to where the drain area was. I immediately yelled at him to get away from there when he went forward and grabbed onto the cement just above the drain. I screamed, grabbed his arms, told him that he would be fine and that Daddy would pull him out and just like that David had sprinted across the street and pulled him out. Brigham later told me that he felt his legs being sucked in. You know, I have had moments like these where I know with everything that I am that the Lord's hand was in the situation. Usually, I am just sick afterwards about the situations and how close to danger my children were. But this time I was very calm and it was David this time who didn't handle it well. For the rest of the night, he struggled and did not sleep well at all last night.

As I ponder how blessed we were last night, my heart goes out to all those dead in Joplin, MO because of this terrible storm. I feel so blessed to have our home in one piece. David's co-worker wasn't so lucky as his house is gone this morning.