Hail from the storm

Update on the storms

I drove around my route yesterday feeling like I was in a war zone. You'd be driving along and everything would be fine, turn a corner and the trees were all down. It's not a very wide destruction path in the scheme of things (about 600 feet), but to the people that it demolished it must seem gigantic.
Some friends of ours lost almost every tree in their yard and too many to count in their pastures. They have sheds blown apart, a barn with a caved in front, huge trees down on their sheds and damage to their house. It could have been much worse. Thankfully God held the roof down so they have a place to live.
A neighbor of theirs went into his basement and when he came back out his roof was gone. Then he noticed that his entire attached garage was missing...completely. They found his garage door a mile away.
Other parts of it were scattered all through the woods around his house. His pole barn is hanging in the trees around his house.

Barns and houses are missing roofs, trees are down in a path that looks like a big bowling ball (600 feet wide) just ran through the woods (except there must have been a spin on that ball because the trees are all twisted).
The eagle baby must have died. The parents were gone. I don't know if I will ever see them again and that makes me so very sad. I love eagles and having them on my route, to see each day, has been a huge blessing for me. This was the 4th family I had watched them raise. I've watched as the babies learned to fly, hunt and then spread their wings and leave. It's like the chapter of a really good book is closing. I didn't want the chapter to end, let alone the book.

Yet life goes on. Every day there are new blessings, new issues, new things to learn. I hope that as time goes by, I learn a few things along the way. Things like keeping my mouth shut and not telling the truth "in love" when really it's just criticizing or complaining. Things like remembering to put the coffee filter in before you make coffee. Things like taking the time to call that person you just thought of, even if you don't really have the time, because you never know if it will be the last thing you get to say to them. Even then, sometimes just calling them and showing them you care might be the most important thing that happened to them that day.

All of these things that happened are really, really sad, but in all of this you see the important things come to light...people. I'm going to try to be a little more about "others" from now on. I know that helping others has always been important to me, but I think as I get older it seems to be gaining ground as a main focus in my life. So much suffering, so many lonely hurting people. So little time.........

Tornado 5-22-11

Hail stones from the storm.

Here at the funny farm.....

They could never say that life at our house is boring. In fact, it borders on the ridiculous quite often. Unfortunately for my children, I seem to have passed on the stupid things happen to Deanna rule.

Poor Jessalyn was working on the back patio and somehow slammed herself in the eye with the wooden end of the push broom and is now sporting a partial shiner. Only my child could do that.

Jacob was playing kick ball on Friday and hurt his ankle. He did not want them to lose the game and so he kept playing. He hurt it again. He continued to play and ended up colliding with another kid on top of 2nd base and hurt it again. They started to play tug o' war and he ended up twisting it in the wrong direction. We spent Friday afternoon in the ER with him. They don't think it's broken, but we have to wait and see. He still cannot put any weight on it, so he will probably have to get it xrayed again. Just what he needed. Forget that, just what I needed. Well, at least once it was someone else and not me getting a test for this stupid mystery illness that I have.

Bad storms are cropping up here, so I'll get off for now and check in again later.

Wow! Little did I know that when I signed off earlier in the post that things would get hectic around here. It looked like we might get a bad thunderstorm, but that's it. The weather radar was red, but then it just turned to yellow, so we were not too worried. Suddenly withing seconds the whole thing turned red, the tornado sirens starting going off and we had multiple tornados all over around here.

Will and I heard thumping and it was huge hail coming down all around us. The flag went from hanging limp on the pole to standing straight out and not moving at all just staying straight. Will was at one end of the house and I was at the other watching. We had our stuff ready in our tornado position, but somehow never made it there. It was all over that quickly.

Our house is fine. No damage. Although I did manage to save some of the hail in the freezer.

My mail route did not fair so well. I heard through the grape vine that a couple of my roads had been in a tornado. Will and I picked up Mom and Dad and went to investigate. If the roads were toast, I needed to know for work. Alternate plans have to be made. It was bad. Trees down on houses and cars, roofs blown off etc.

The hardest part for me though, is that my eagle nest has been destroyed. I have watched the eagles raise 4 families in that nest. Enjoyed seeing them every day as part of my daily routine and that is all done now. They had another baby this year and I don't know if the baby made it. It was not flying yet. I called the DNR and told them about it, so hopefully, someone will go out and check it out. I know they like to save them and rehabilitate them if they can.

I know that in the scheme of things, no lives were lost so it's all good, but I still feel like I am in mourning. Those birds were part of my life and now they hopefully will rebuild somewhere, but it probably will not be where I can watch the nest and see them daily. A part of my life that I enjoyed greatly is gone. I know, I know, life goes on, but sometimes things that happen are not what I would have chosen. Still, God in His grace continues to bless me each day with other great things. So I will head out today to see what the "new" plan is.