Oops. What did I say yesterday about having the tv all to myself? Our weather situation made the national news last night, and turned out to be quite an experience for us.

Around 6:15 pm, my mother-in-law came over to the house to help me drill some screws into the wall for shelving. It began to rain and the sky got that really weird green color. Then, it began to pour. I hadn't seen it rain that hard in a long while. After about 20 minutes, I looked out our front window and noticed the utility pole was leaning at at 50 degree angle. The power lines that went from the top of that pole to the side of our house were draping across my driveway. It looked like I could drive under them maybe, but I wasn't sure.

Church was supposed to start at 7:00, but it was lightning and raining so hard there was no way I was going to try to drag three little kids across the parking lot. I didn't see the light on in the nursery, so I knew I would be back there watching my kids anyway. Connor and I pulled up chairs to the window and watched the storm outside. The fire department came out and set up cones in front of the leaning pole so traffic wasn't allowed to proceed on our street. They didn't come up to the door or anything, and left after fifteen minutes.

We only had partial electricity. Some rooms had it, others didn't. The TV wouldn't come on and our water wasn't working either. Around 8:30 I was talking on the phone with Jen from church, when I heard someone's voice yelling at me from the back porch. It was my neighbor telling me we needed to get out of the house right away. I scooped up the children and we ran outside through the rain to their house. He turned me around and showed me what the deal was. His willow tree had been knocked over onto the lines, which made the pole start to lean, which pulled on the power lines attached to our house. The power lines that had been partially torn from the side of the house were crackling and zapping against the aluminum siding. Scary stuff.

The fire department and utilities truck came back and they shut off the power to both of our homes, then took the wires that had fallen. My neighbor asked them why they didn't tell me to get out of the house and they said they didn't notice. Comforting. You think they would investigate a little about live wires from a falling pole. The workers shut the power off, took the wires, then left. Anyway, we stayed there for a couple hours until my mother-in-law could pick me up, as she was dealing with her church's own flooding drama.

I followed her out to her house about 20 miles away, through one of the most active lightning storms I've seen. And get this, yesterday morning, the driver's side window quit working when it was in the down position. So my window is completely open, I'm driving through rain and a lightning storm- and my one phobia in life is being struck by lightning. I was leaning towards the middle of the van as much as possible in hopes that the lightning bolt wouldn't be able to reach those extra two inches. Don't laugh, it worked.

It turns out there were several funnel cloud sightings last night, one that was only three miles away. I'm soo glad Baylea wasn't here. She would have had a heart attack. The long night ended with a funny thought, though. Brett called me from camp. He said they had a talent show that night that Baylea entered. Okay, here's this often shy seven year-old at a senior high camp and she's in the talent show? What did she do, I ask? He said she walked up on stage, laid down on her back, then arched up into a bridge for three seconds, then walked off. Oh my gosh, no she didn't. Yeah, Brett says, and because it's Baylea, the high school crowd went wild! I would have loved to see it. Thanks Bayles, you put a smile on my face at the end of a very cruddy day.

It's Thursday afternoon and I still haven't been back to the house yet. The automated electric company message estimated my power to be restored tonight at eleven. But as I'm typing this, the weather services are posting more storm watches for tonight and I already hear the thunder rolling. I was swapping stories with Lydia last night and we laughed at how we were already formulating our blogs for the next day. We've become internet addicts, we admit. So if tonight is exciting again, you'll hear about it soon.