Our Story - The Storms

I know that everyone who reads this blog has their own story about April 27th, 2011. Ours is a story of mercy and of thankfulness. One that I think I will always remember - not for the destruction, as we escaped mainly unscathed, but because of the memories we made as a family in the aftermath.

The weathermen had predicted that we would have storms that day. When I got up that morning, I watched the weather and decided to just keep the kids home from school that day. Schools were opening late, at 10:00, but most of the weathermen had predicted the worst storms to come in early afternoon. I knew the minute I took them and got home that I would be going back to get them. I am so thankful that I kept them home.

I kept the TV on throughout the day and anytime they put a warning out for our county, we would all go down to the basement. We have a "safe room" that has concrete walls that we use for storms although I have always felt safe just being in the basement.

We tried not to make it too scary for the kids but did have to make them go into the safe room several times that day. We brought down food, pillows, blankets, along with the weather radio and flashlights. We have satellite TV so the signal kept going out so we didn't have the TV to rely on.



Most of the day was spent texting with different family members, making sure everyone was home and taking cover. My parents lost power early on that day so I would text them every time they needed to take cover. When I was growing up, my mother would make us go in the closet under the stairs any time the sky got a funny look to it. We always gave her a hard time about it. But as a mother now, I understand exactly why she did it.

Morgan's mom Kymm was actually able to watch Channel 31's live coverage of the storms via their website at her home in Wilmington, NC. She was actually our main source of information once our TV signal went out. She would text me the latest info and I would pass it on to others. Technology played such a huge part in that day and in the recovery afterwards. Another piece of the puzzle to be thankful for.

At some point during that crazy day, Jeremy's phone fell off his clip and landed in water. He had heard that if you put it in a bag of rice, that the rice will absorb the water from the phone. Fortunately it worked. Unfortunately, we did not put the bag of rice out of Chase's reach which resulted in this.



Another reason I was thankful for power - so I could vacuum up this mess!

The storms continued until around 8:00 that night. I still can't believe that we did not ever lose power. It did not even flicker. We really couldn't believe our good fortune and soon found out my brother Aaron and his family were without power along with my parents.

The timeline is fuzzy to me now but at some point we found out that power would be out for Madison County for at least 4 - 5 days (it ended up taking 5 - 7). We invited my brother and his family to come up to stay with us until they got their power back on. None of us even thought about the fact that the large amounts of rain would make it dangerous for them to drive to our home.

I waited about 45 minutes before I started getting worried about them. It is typically a 20 minute drive so I was thinking maybe 30 minutes since it was raining. I kept trying their cell phones but it would go directly to voicemail or the lovely cell phone lady would announce that all circuits were busy. After an hour, I was really worried. I was trying to decide if Jeremy should go out looking for them when I finally reached them on their cell. They were in a state of panic as the roads were horrible and they were terrified they were going to be swept off of the roads. They finally made it to our home safe and sound but they definitely were traumatized by the event. We were so thankful that the Lord had mercy on them and delivered them safely to our house. They really do not know how in the world they made it.

At the end of that day, our house was standing, we had power, and all my family members were accounted for. I am still thankful for that and had wondered why we were shown such mercy. I know that for the majority of the people in neighboring counties, they could not say the same. It took us a couple of hours to calm down and get everyone settled down for the night. Little did we know how crazy and hectic our lives were about to be.

To be continued...