O What a Night

Well, it wasn't crazy enough that last Wednesday we were packing our last minute stuff in preparation for our trip to Thailand. It also happened to be a crazy night for other reasons.

Every Wednesday night is Guys and Girls Night for us. We didn't let a looming 27 hours of travel keep us away from tradition. So Rocky headed to Guys night, and the girls came to my house for Girls night. As Rocky pulled away he said something about the tornado that was on the way. Rocky being Rocky I didn't think much of it. Why would I especially since he was in fact pulling away.

Well, I should have thought more of it. It was about 9:15 when the storm hit. It happened so fast. We turned on the TV to watch the news and when we saw that a hailstorm was about to hit we went to move a car into our garage but we were too late. It began hailing like I've never heard it hail before. I thought it might come through the roof or break windows it was so loud.

As we continued to watch the news and look outside, we saw strong winds and heard about funnel clouds nearby. We were all a little shaken and I kept wondering whether it was worth waking Adelaide up to bring her into the closet under the stairs. Luckily my Louisiana bad weather background came in handy. I decided to wait until I heard the tornado which is supposedly like the sound of a train. Well, we never heard that sound, just the sound of thunder, rain, wind and hail which went on for about 30 minutes.

Then just as quickly as it started, it ended and my friends decided to pack it up before the next storm began. The news had 3 storms on radar. As we walked outside to inspect for hail damage, a guy in an SUV sped past us. He was going so fast we were all a little weirded out, but didn't really think much about it. Then we all went back inside to get the kids ready to go home.

As we were loading up the cars we saw a cop parked down the street and walking toward us. It was really dark so we could only see his silhouette in the street light. However when he turned to the side we saw that he had out a rifle. I hurried back inside and my friends quickly drove away. They called me once they got out of my neighborhood to report that there were other cops barricading streets and packing heat as well so I should probably lock my doors and get Rocky home.

So I called Rocky and he began to head home. Luckily the storm has just passed so he could do so safely. He called the Cedar Park PD on the way home but they weren't very helpful so we're still unsure about what was going on.

We crashed at around 1 am only to be awakened shortly after by yet another storm. I got up and watched the news to make sure we weren't in the path of a tornado or something. I was so nervous after the first storm. Well, this storm died down sooner than the first one had and things were calm again but I couldn't sleep after so much excitement. So I just laid in bed waiting for the clock to alarm 4:15am, the time we needed to get up and get ready to go to the airport.

We headed to a friend's house right around 5am (it's super awesome to have friends that are willing to wake up at 5am to bring us to the airport BTW). On the way we saw the havoc the storms had caused-- downed trees, flooding, power outages, etc. We were fortunate for sure. Not exactly the restful night I was hoping for going into 2 days of travel.