People talk about the weather a lot and so I’m not exactly looking for this blog to be Lisa’s Official Weather Spiel, but springtime in Kansas has been giving me quite the sudden and long-lasting surges in adrenaline of late. We had gotten home from church a little bit late last night because we ended up going to Dairy Queen afterwards (waffle bowl sundaes rule!). We also hadn’t eaten dinner before church because I made a stew and my potatoes weren’t quite done yet. So after a very late dinner (after 10pm) we bedded the kids down and I was looking over some coupons I’d just received and then went back into the kitchen to do some last-minute cleanup when…the sirens went off. I ran into the kids room, grabbing socks and shoes for them, trying to rouse them. I kept telling them they needed to get up, very loudly in fact, but those kids were out! Isaiah especially. After a few minutes of me breathing rapidly, my husband trying to tell me to calm down, and the kids dazed and confused, we managed to get ready to head over to the storm shelter. David told me to go ahead and go as he was trying to cram some blankets in his bag. I grabbed the kids’ wrists and started to run. The storm shelter is just across the street so it wasn’t a very long run but one of them managed to fall down twice. I was probably going too fast and the fact that I had a vice grip on both of their wrists probably didn’t help either. But I was trying to save their lives…they’ll thank me later. Anyway, we got to the storm shelter, dodged some bugs that were hanging out by the light, and found out we were the first ones there. Someone wisely put a radio in there so i turned it on to hear…weathermen excitedly telling folks to head for a shelter because the tornado was in Topeka…NOT! They were still playing music. I was trying to find a station that had the weather report and finally found one, only to hear the man say that the city of Topeka would not be affected by the storm. Huh? That was a bit frustrating. We walked back outside and headed back home. The sirens started to go off again when we got across the street but the radar showed the storm to just pass us to the west. Of course, it was not easy to go to bed after all that. I ended up staying awake until after 1am. Unfortunately, I heard this morning that the town of Chapman was heavily damaged. That town is pretty close to where we used to live and we actually know some folks there. As far as I know, they’re okay and so is their house just barely as the tornado destroyed houses just a couple blocks away from them. The tornado was 1/2 mile wide, pretty big. According to the weather folks, we may have some severe storms today, tonight, and tomorrow. I am thinking we should just camp out at our friends house for the next couple days. They have a basement (here we come, Cara!).
I need to go get some lunch underway. On a side note, I am listening to the kids talking to each other, if you can call it that. They are pretending to speak in a different language and some of the words they are saying are very…interesting to say the least. On my next post, I hope to go into some detail about my CVS Pharmacy shopping trip the other day. It was fu-un!