A New Baby in Tornado Alley!

On May 29, 2008 our new grandson, Jake Brian, was born! Off I flew(for two weeks) to Nebraska to help out(mostly) with Jake's big sisters, Megan(15 months) and Karaline(3 years). The girls are so fun! Karaline addressed Jake as "little buddy," and everywhere we went Megan waved to everyone with her signature "parade wave." So cute! It was a treat to help out!
We were very busy...we went to Build-a Bear, Chuck E. Cheese and the zoo. We read lots of books, danced, had tea parties, baked cupcakes and animal cookies and watched a movie or two. Of course we also spent time cuddling and kissing sweet little Jake:) He's a little cutie! I sure miss everyone!!! XOXOXOXOXO Love you all! P.S. Summer and Brian are phenomenal parents!

One night, at 2:30 a.m., I was awakened by my son-in-law, Brian. He tapped on my door and said "Sue, the tornado siren is on. Please get Karaline and come down to the basement." Needless to say, I jumped out of bed, went and grabbed Karaline and headed down to the basement! Having NO experience with tornadoes(only earthquakes!), I had no idea how long we would be in the basement and I needed to use the restroom which was up two flights of stairs! So, I took a chance and ran up there, wondering if the roof would fly off! Yikes! I made it back down safely:) The girls just thought it was great that we were all down in the basement(also the playroom) together! We listened to the radio and after about a half hour we were given the A-OK to return to bed...whew!

About three days later, in the evening, I noticed that the sky was spectacular looking-one section was bright orange and "on fire!' There were lightening bolts all over. In the other direction the clouds were very low and dark and it was WINDY and rainy! I called Summer and Brian to come and look. We noticed many people outside and some were taking pictures of the sky. To me it felt very foreboding considering that the evening before the tornado there had been TORRENTIAL rain! Uh oh...
Sure enough, at 7:30 p.m. the tornado siren went on! We grabbed the kids, pillows and blankets and hunkered down in the basement, again. This time Brian brought the t.v. with us so we were able to be better informed. Sadly, we learned that four boy scouts were killed at a camp that was about a half hour from us. Finally, after about two hours we were able to return upstairs:) Thankfully no tornadoes had touched down near us!
According to the locals, it was unusual to have so much tornado activity...Lucky us:) I'm just so grateful that we were not harmed!