Living in Oklahoma=living with crazy storms. That’s all there is to it.

On Sunday afternoon, Jude was napping and I was working on the computer when I noticed that it was suddenly really dark. I went in the living room and turned on the TV and of course there was a storm coming. Simon was out, showing houses, and I suddenly felt like I ought to run upstairs and get Jude out of his bed. In tornado season, the best thing to do during a severe storm is to get in the center of your house, preferably near a bathroom or in a bathtub, or under the stairs. So that’s what we did – I practically shook poor Jude out of his sweet slumber and ran down the stairs and pulled the door shut.

In retrospect, I’m really glad we got in the closet even though sometimes it feels a little silly or over-reacting. That was the scariest storm I’ve ever been in, and it wasn’t even a tornado. The house started to shake and I could hear debris hitting the roof. It got really windy and really loud. The power went out and I couldn’t hear the TV anymore. I tried to access internet on the iPad, but no luck (DARN IT THAT I DIDN’T GET THE 3G!!!! WHY’D I HAVE TO BE CHEAP AND ONLY GET THE WIFI!!!!). I called Simon to make sure he wasn’t out in the thick of it and that’s when I freaked out on the phone to him because I could hear the glass breaking from the golfball-sized hail.  The back of our house really took the brunt of it because of the way the house sits. We got slammed. If that wasn’t officially a tornado, I don’t EVER want to be in a real one. Ever. That was too much like a scene out of Twister for my comfort level.

It looks like a leaf salad exploded all over the yard. The street is a mushy mess of wet leaves.

Check out that avalanche of hail.

Poor poor yard. Poor poor trees.

See that shiny stuff in the living room? Yup – lotsa broken glass, all the way to the doorframe where I was standing. It was all over our furniture, down in the air vents, on the windowsills. Two of the panes of glass upstairs in Jude’s room were totally cracked and starting to fleck off pieces of glass into his room.  I am so glad we got in the closet – if we had been sitting in the living room it could’ve been really ugly.

We have dents & dings in the garage door too.

It looks like I took a salad shooter to the walls! Weirdly enough, those leaves were thrown with such force onto the siding that they’ve stained it.

Poor little sandbox. Its now like an Oklahoma lake.

Shiny ice bullets of death.

Oh look – how convenient! Now I have a pass-thru for when we’re eating dinner outside. Handy! Watch your fingers!

“Dat’s my DADDEEEE!”

Whew. Ok, that was crazy. And freaky. I’m really hoping that the weather calms down over the next few days. Or at least if it’s just rain, that’d be ok.

All in all, it’s a big mess to clean up and we’re probably going to get a new roof and other lovelies (why not new FURNITURE?!?! Does glass embedded in my furniture count?) BUT we’re all safe. We still have a roof over our heads. There’s no roof leakage that I can tell yet. So we can deal with a little mess to clean up.