Well, today certainly made for an exciting day! We spent the morning with Andrea's dad and her aunt & uncle in Enid, OK, visiting the graves of her grandparents. It was nice to see Don & Georgia again & we all went to IHOP afterwards for brunch (very good!). We had seen on the news last night that there was a likelihood for some pretty nasty storms later in the afternoon, so we made sure & got back here early in the afternoon.

Some friends from Coffeyville, Stephen & Heather Heslip, were in town for a wedding & came by to visit for awhile. As we watched the weather on TV it became apparent that things were headed our way. We quickly started moving boxes so that we could get both vehicles in the garage, as they were predicting hail with the storms. Stephen & Heather headed for home after eating dinner together & Andrea & I kept tabs on the weather. The closer the storms got, the worse they got as well. To make matters worse they kept saying that the storms (tornadic by this time) were headed straight for us ... and I mean straight for us! They kept calling out the streets around us, so we cleared out a spot in our pantry, gathered a few supplies & hunkered down for about 30-45 minutes with the kids. We were pretty concerned there for awhile & fully expected the power to go out & for us to hear the 'roar' of a tornado at any time. I don't think I've prayed that intensely in awhile. The storm just missed us (by a few miles north). It was quite an experience! I think that is probably the closest I have come to a tornado, and I don't think I would ever want to get any closer! The kids did well with the whole thing. Emerie was trying her hardest to settle in to my shoulder & fall asleep, but there wasn't much room to get comfortable (note the picture above). Micah actually did fall asleep, which is pretty amazing.

One cool thing is that our TiVo was on one of the news channels the whole time, so after we emerged from our shelter we were able to rewind it & watch the storm come & go before our eyes. Pretty cool! We're thankful that God kept our little family safe through it all. I think that's enough excitement for a long while!