The Foolish Six

Yes the title is in reference to the Parable of the 10 virgins, and yes, we are the foolish six. Let me say this, we have lived in Oklahoma for 9 years and I swear we have said 100 times, we need a tornado shelter, we need to make sure we are ready. Are we.....NO and it was very evident last night.

We went to bed and all was well, peaceful and quiet. At about 1:30 we were awakened to blaring tornado sirens. Chris and I jumped out of bed and looked outside. The sky gets a particular color and look when a storm has circulation and the sky was just that. We mobilized into action and turned on the TV to get a play by play. We were being told that a tornado had formed about 3 miles from our house and had touched down. We began to panic when just as quickly, they said it had gone back up and there was nothing. The sirens stopped but by then all the girls were in our room and it wasn't a pretty sight, the panic was evident. In the past 9 years we have had to get in a tornado shelter 3 times and luckily we had a neighbor who's mother had a huge shelter very close to us so we always felt secure, unfortunately she died 3 months ago so we now realized we had no where to go. All of a sudden our TV went out. We turned on the radio to keep posted and this is what we heard "It looks like we have another tornado touching down" 1 mile from our home...........................then silence, our power went out and it was pitch dark. The girls started screaming and Olivia turned and hit her head on a pillar. It was mayhem. We grabbed all the girls and headed outside.....I know this sounds crazy to go outside but we knew our neighbor had just installed a small shelter under his garage so we were going to our next best option. I just want you to picture this; torrential rain, 50 mph winds, all of us barefoot and running to the neighbors house through mud and water up to our ankles. Ava was clinging to me in absolute terror. We started banging on our neighbors door when we realized they are probably in their shelter and can't hear us. Chris and I are screaming to each other to be heard over the wind. I am telling him we need to get back in the house and get in a closet, he won't give up on getting in the shelter. He starts banging on the garage door and to our relief we are finally heard and they let us in. I really can't imagine what a sight we were at this point, soaking wet, in our pj's, muddy feet and 2 of the 4 girls crying hysterically.

The shelter was a sardine can and we were so squished that it was almost laughable. Ava never raised her head from my chest, she was shaking so hard and I could hear her heart beating. I just held her as tight as I could. After 15 min we got word that it had turned and moved north and east of us. We headed back to the house.

We got the weather radio out when we got home, put all the girls in our bed and Chris and I were up for the next 2 hours listening to it all. There were tornadoes all around us all night but nothing came so close again. When I climbed into bed Ava was still awake and still scared to death. I cuddled close to her and then in the dark I heard her cute little voice....."Mom, does the potato have eyes and big teeth?" "What" I responded "What are you talking about?" "The potato, was it going to eat us?" I started to giggle, "you mean the tornado?" "Oh, yes the tornado" she responded. She doesn't even know what a tornado is and I realized that the whole time she thought we were being chased by, and hiding from, a big scary monster potato. It made me chuckle as I went to sleep.

We went to bed but forgot to reset our clocks and slept in. Wow what a night.