We had a great trip to Colorado to visit Alicia’s parents and extended family. JJ is by far the star of the show, currently the only grand-child and great-grandchild. That’s not going to be the case for long, so it’s a good thing he’s enjoying it!

Perhaps the most unexpected excitement happened while we were at church. It was about 1:50 and church was supposed to end at 2:00. I was walking the halls with the little man who wasn’t so interested in the food storage lesson that was being given in Relief Society. The skies were dark, and after a while it began to hail. JJ and I were watching out the glass doors with a handful of other people when everyone in the chapel began streaming out. My first thought was “Whew, we made it through another Sunday.” But I was wrong. I didn’t know what time it was, and didn’t realize that the meeting in the chapel should have lasted until 2:10 and the other meetings should have gotten out sooner. I walked down the hall to find Dustin and my mom. Before I found them, I heard someone say there was a tornado nearby and that we all needed to huddle in the hallways. That got my heart beating a little faster, but I quickly found Dustin and my mom showed up shortly after that.

I calmly explained to Dustin the things we learned in Tornado drills all through elementary school, that if we heard a train coming, we needed to duck down and put a book over our heads. We didn’t have any math books, and as soon as my mom arrived, she wanted to go outside and see it. We have had so many tornado warnings that rarely produced any damage that when there’s a warning, we head outside to see if we can see the funnel cloud.

We were corralled into the cultural hall where they were singing hymns, said a prayer, and made updates about the storm. We could hear hail pounding on the roof, and were just sure our car would be hammered with dents when we left. Finally, around 2:30, we were allowed to leave and were relieved to see large hail, but no dents. It was still quite windy and rainy, but no golfball sized hail–that was good.

It turns out that some men working in the clerk’s office could see the tornado above the high school across the street. We wish we’d seen it. Turns out I was just looking out the wrong window. That’s too bad.

At the intersection one block from the church, there was a fence blown down and quite a bit of broken debris in the road. It may be that the strong winds blew it down and it was run over, but I like to think that the tornado touched down right there super close to us. I like a little bit of adventure.

We made it home and met up with my sister Carrie, who had been attending the singles ward at another building and my dad and grandpa, who had been at grandpa’s ward. We all had different but similar stories of the tornado experience. We came home to hail everywhere, and we still have some big pieces in the freezer:

My poor mom had finally gotten these flowers planted–they’d been sitting on the porch for almost two weeks before she found time to get them in, and less that 24 hours later they were pounded. They would have been okay where she had them!

It turns out that the tornado did touch down and caused a fair amount of damage at the Southlands Mall just 3 miles away from where we were at church. My mom had just been shopping there on Friday. I think that’s the closest I’ve ever come to a tornado. It turns out the only severe injury was a guy trying to take pictures. Maybe it’s a good thing we had to stay inside the church instead of looking for the funnel.