Tornado

I spent Monday in bed with Luke, having a Blue's Clues Marathon before it expired on Netflix. I just had arm surgery on Friday, and Monday was the first day I was alone with Luke. Since I had been drugged up most of the weekend, I hadn't paid much attention to the weather. Howard called me around 1pm to ask if the kids were getting released early. Apparently, work was allowing people to leave early if their kids were getting released from school early. I knew our district policy, and it is to keep the children. I told him to leave work anyway and pick the children up early. This is primarily due to the fact that I am not currently able to drive. I knew if severe weather hit in the afternoon that I couldn't drive to the bus stop to pick them up. In my mind I was thinking heavy rain, hail, and lightening - not a tornado. 

Once they all arrived home we hung out for about 30 minutes when we decided we should turn on the news. I'm so glad we did. Once we saw that a tornado was forming in our area we had the kids get their shoes on and we casually put together a laundry basked of medicine, various chargers/electronics, a few stuffed animals, my purse, and 4 irreplaceable family photos dating as early as 1920. We were really not concerned at all because we've gone down into our shelter numerous times. 

Once the news said "SW 149th street" we knew we were in trouble. By the time we got in the shelter we watched news coverage on the laptop until we lost power. 

Once things got really serious, we started praying and crying…and some more crying. We reminded the children that we were safe in our shelter and that even if our house was not okay, we would be.  The noise was deafening and it felt like forever. I even remember the ground rumbling while we were down there. Once it quieted down, Howard opened the shelter and immediately saw our very damaged garage door. The children and I stayed put while Howard assessed the damage to the rest of the house. About 5 minutes later we came out of the shelter. Shell shocked and speechless pretty much describe how we felt. Our light pole was snapped in two, we have a 2x4 impaled in our roof, our mailbox (and mail inside it) are gone.  One of our trees snapped off. Our master bedroom window is busted out and we have debris in our bedroom. The vinyl siding to our house is also damaged. We have holes in our roof. Our backyard fence it mostly gone. We acquired random debris in our yard - notably insulation, trampoline parts, rags, vogue magazine, etc.  Our garage door had to be ripped off by two men so we could get our vehicles out.

Random things that did not blow away - my new wreath, patio furniture, and trash cans.  Yet the wind snapped a street light in half? Weird!  I've always heard about the random destruction of a tornado, but seeing it first hand is surreal.

We checked on our neighbors, turned off the gas in the homes on our street, and assessed the overall neighborhood damage. During this time we were unaware of the complete destruction across the field from our home. The smell of gas was strong. There was a break in a main line a few houses down. 

Our neighborhood is badly damaged, but not like what's on the news. The most serious damage occurred on the north side of the streets SW 149th and 19th. We live on the south side of the 149th.

Update: I typed this up Monday night. Since then I've just been mentally exhausted to write any more. I'm posting this incomplete because I know a lot of you wanted to see photos. Obviously our home is not like what you have been seeing on the news (thank goodness). We are so very fortunate that we still have a home to return to in the next week or so. Yesterday I was looking at the tornado track mapped out. Even though it was classified as an EF-5, my home was hit by the outskirt of it. Our damage is comparable to somewhere in between an EF-0 or EF-1 tornado.

Our front yard

Street light across the street

Neighbor

Our roof

Neighbors a/c unit, our shed  in the side yard

Master Bedroom

Back of my house

Garage door

View from my roof, facing south.

A view from my roof facing North East. The tan coloring behind the green trees is the rubble of SW 149th Street. The buildings would have been clearly visible a few days ago.

My next door neighbors to the north.

Irony. Calm Wind Drive is the street behind me. I live on the north end of Nightshade Dr if you want to google the map.

At the back of my neighborhood, where the really destructive part of the tornado hit.

New construction down from my house.

Links to our tornado shelter blog posts

http://htparkes.blogspot.com/2010/02/flat-safe-part-1.html

http://htparkes.blogspot.com/2010/02/flat-safe-part-ii.html

Hip Hop & Tumbling

 Erin and Jackson have been taking classes at "A Step Above Dance" since the fall. Today was their recital. Erin is actually in a tumbling class, but they incorporated a few dance moves so that the girls could show off their skills. Jackson is in Hip-Hop. He begged us after watching some dance movies last summer. Even though Jack didn't learn how to spin on his head like he had hoped, he gained some valuable skills. He was the only boy in his class, but that didn't bother him. He got a lot of attention.

 The following pictures are from their final dress rehearsal this afternoon. Their actual recital is tonight, but we are not allowed to take pictures then. 

Enjoy!

May Day

Howard had sinus surgery on May 1st, the very same day that our house officially went on the market.

 This is Howard, 2 days post op. He's recovering well and should be doing just fine by the time I have my 2nd arm surgery in 2 weeks. (My first surgery was April 4th.)

 Each time we've had surgery, the dogs have stayed close by us in bed while we recover. It's very comforting.

 When Tucker and Dash are not in bed cuddling with us or digging holes in the backyard, they attentively guard the house by barking at ANYTHING that moves out front through the window.

  

Here's the official listing to our house if you are interested. 

http://www.century21.com/property/15317-nightshade-dr--oklahoma-city-ok-73170-C2120512584

Laundry Day

 It's laundry day. I hate laundry. 

These boys decided to make it a little fun this afternoon. 

We put all of the clean clothes in a pile and divide them up into individual baskets. Today, the boys are doing cannon balls into the laundry pile. Normally we pile it all on my bed, but Howard is currently occupying that space.  Each person is expected to put away his or her own clothes. I stopped folding other people's clothes once I started school. Even though I'm a homemaker I don't feel guilty about it. Laundry was fun when I was first married, because it felt like I was playing house.  By the time #4 came along, it was dread. I don't even know how my friends and family with 5+ kids do it. My heart goes out to them on laundry day.

 

(Sorry about the poor picture quality. It was hard to get an action shot that wasn't blurry.)

What We've Been Up To

I was feeling crafty in March.

While in Missouri for spring Break, I made a new wreath for my home. 

 Now that I don't have a baby to rip out my earrings, I've been wearing more dangley earrings lately, but I needed somewhere to put them. I came up with this idea.

It took about 5 minutes to make. 

fabric + tulle + picture frame + glue = very pretty earring organizer

This is Howard's mustache on March 31st for "Mustache March".  Glad it's over!

Spring Break in Missouri

Spring break was spent in Missouri with my sister. I took the kids and left for the week so Howard could get some projects completed around the house to get it ready to sell. We hope to put the house on the market in May. It's frustrating because we know we are moving in the fall, but we don't know WHERE to just yet.

Most days in Missouri were cold, and I even had to cut my trip short because of a snow storm headed my way. My sister Lisa and I were able to visit our older sister and take her out to dinner for her birthday.

Other days were spent watching way too much TV or eating at Dairy Queen (since we don't have one in OKC). 

The day before we left, we went to the St. Louis Science Museum. Our OKC museum membership was accepted there, so we had free parking and special exhibits. Woohoo!!! I love free!!! Of course it wasn't really free when my children discovered that there was a Build-A-Bear workshop on the premises. I caved and let them each have one. (Howie passed on the offer).

 Howie and I went to the Lab and did two lab experiments while Lisa took the younger kids to the Discovery Room (geared towards younger children).

 Sorry for the blur, but the kids had so much fun pulling a leaver and getting a ball to go high up in the air. It was quite fascinating! 

Near closing time, we needed to figure out dinner. I did a quick search on my phone for "best restaurants in St. Louis" and we found a quaint little soda fountain shop that served soup, sandwiches, and ice cream sodas.  Fortunately is was less than 10 minutes away, in traffic.  It was called, Fountain on Locust, and very cute! Luckily we arrived before the rush. It's a popular place!

Jackson's First Real Prank

This story is too good not to share. It's too long for a Facebook update, so here you go...

Howard had today off of work, so after we picked Jackson up from 1/2 day Kindergarten we went out to lunch - a Chinese buffet.  After Howard paid, he set his wallet on the table. A minute later Jackson swiped it off the table and hid it on his chair.  Howard, Lucas, and I did not notice a thing. Once we got out to the van, Jackson (very casually) said, "hey Dad, you left your wallet on the table." Howard immediately started running back inside, because he didn't have his wallet and thought he left it inside. A second later Jackson started busting up in laughter and pointed to Howard's wallet on the floor of the van where he put it. I quickly yelled back at Howard to return to the van. Jack told us everything that happened. Even after Jackson told us the details we still can't remember him taking the wallet off of the table. We were all laughing so hard, since this was his first real practical joke without the assistance or encouragement of anyone else (he's only 6). That was quick thinking on Jackson's part, since he only had a matter of seconds to pull it off without getting caught.

We had a great laugh, but I did remind Jackson that jokes like that are not always appropriate and to not do it to anyone else. Hope you enjoyed the story, but now that I read it in written form, it's not nearly as funny as the real life events. You just had to be there to fully appreciate Jackson's prank.

Birthdays

 Howie turned 11 in January

Howard and I were too lazy to wrap Howie's few tiny presents (video games, bluetooth ear piece) so we decided at the last minute to hide them. I left 4 clues for his 4 presents. He tore up the house and had a blast looking for his presents. It lasted a lot longer than the 30 seconds it would have taken him to unwrap a few things. I think we may have started a tradition for the older kids. He's in his pajamas, because as usual we open presents first thing in the morning.

 In the afternoon we had a small video game party for him and a few friends. They basically just played video games the whole time and were very content with that. When it was cake time I realized I didn't have 11 candles or two 1s, so Howie improvised with a math problem  18-7 =11. Brilliant! My angel food cake isn't pretty (I need a new bundt pan), but it sure was delicious! His birthday dinner consisted of a t-bone steak and steamed broccoli, his choice.

 Lucas turned 4 in February

 Lucas helped me make his cake (white boxed kind) and was very specific on how he wanted it. Blue on top and green on the bottom. For him it was all about the color, not the taste.

 

 We had a little birthday party for him. I was sad that not very many friends came, but he didn't know the difference and was very happy. It was a success for him even though it was a failure for me. 

 Luke was so happy to finally be a "big boy". He thinks 4 is the magic number for becoming a big boy. 

He ate the last piece of cake for breakfast this morning (the day after his birthday). 

 

 As far as presents went, he lucked out because I had bought some things a few years ago and forgot about them. Howard found them in the attic around Christmas time, so Luke got them all since he will outgrow them soon. His favorite was an Imaginext Pirate Ship (Black Friday sale). When he opened it he yelled excitedly, "I wanted this!" His presents were all wrapped, since that's still really important to a 4 year old. His birthday was on Sunday, so we had his party on Saturday and saved his presents for his actual birthday. For his birthday dinner he wanted McDonald's, so that's where we were Saturday night. I tried to talk him into sushi, but he wouldn't budge on his choice.