May Photo Catch Up

I ended up taking less pictures in general this month. This is partially because we were so busy/stressed, but also because I didn't make it a priority. Hopefully June will be different :)

Phil and I are both looking forward to our new normal! He starts his job with a small start-up company this Monday. It'll be strange going from a flexible schedule to a 9-5 work block. However, he is happy to start working and is excited about the work he will be doing. I'm also glad to have better health insurance again!!

As I said in my last post, shortly after cake, Phil and I had a quick dinner. That's about the time we have to seek shelter from the incredible hail storm we experienced. However, here are a few photos we got before that all went down :)

{Cake and Champagne!}

The edge of the window you see is the one that was busted completely. We were amazed that the champagne glass and all the wine glass you see behind the table were not broken at all! It may take me several tries at cleaning Jillian's high chair to feel like I got every single shard of glass that could be on the seat. If nothing else, I do have a Bumbo and tray.

{Phil, Jillian, and Phil's proud parents :)}

His parents really did leave just in time. About halfway home for them, (in the opposite direction of the storm), is the time it got crazy for us. They literally missed it by an hour. Still very happy they got to come down!

{The Dr. and his girls}

Not the most flattering picture of me, but Phil's face says it all. He was so thrilled and giddy! Even though he's a doctor, don't ask for advice about your head cold. He's not that kind of doctor ;)

We didn't take any pictures that night just because we were so concerned with covering the window and making sure we were safe. We contemplated getting a hotel room, but ultimately decided to just stay home. We slept with our door open and lights on so no one got any ideas about ransacking our place. I wouldn't care about losing stuff, but Jillian's room is closer to the door/broken window than our room. I wanted to make sure she was as safe as possible.

{Our busted window}

The interesting thing about this window is that it faces south. Most severe storms move in an ENE fashion, with a few exceptions. This particular night, we had several cells forming NW from us moving in a SSE direction, with a few other cells SW from us moving NNE. This caused two of the large cells to merge on top of the OKC metro area. After the major one, there were still a few cells popping up that were moving SSE. They were not as bad as the first big one, but it was still pretty awful most of the night.

{View from the inside}

We didn't have trash bags large enough to cover the window, nor did we have any cardboard boxes. We picked a sheet set we didn't really care about and Phil hammered it around the window for the night. He also put a few nails on the outside so if anyone tried to open the window to get in, they'd make enough noise to alert us.

{Glass and window pieces on our patio}

{Our front door/stairwell}

I have the door open, but there are a few leaves that were stuck to our door. Leaves are still just everywhere right now.

{Overlooking our patio to the east}

This particular tree has made me worried a few times. One of its larger branches is right over our roof. I figured, if a big enough storm blew through, it might fall through our roof. Well, as luck would have it, a large branch from this tree did fall down, (not on our roof), on Saturday night. I have a feeling that branch would have caused some big damage had it still been attached to the tree!

{Overlooking the patio facing west}

Like I said - leaves and tree branches everywhere.

{Boarded up}

We were one of the last people of the day to get a board over their busted window before the next round of storms last night. {Luckily the storms got here so late, (shortly after midnight), that it was mostly just rain and high winds, (we're talking up to 70 mph).} They did a good job and I'm so glad we got something to cover up. So here's my lovely view for quite awhile. Glass is backordered due to all the damage the storm caused. I'm not sure when they'll replace it. The complex did tell us that there were over 270 broken windows in our complex alone AND a few of the chimney smoke stacks on a few other units are either leaning or completely lying flat on the roof. There's quite a bit of clean up to be done.

A quick story as well for my own mental records. Skip if you'd like :) I still have a key to the church we got married in, and that my mom worked for before they moved to Minnesota. I tried giving it back, but was told to keep it in cases of severe weather since we live on the 2nd story of an apartment complex. We got the church and made our way to the nursery. It started pouring rain about 20 minutes after we got there and the wind was causing the rain to go sideways. You could hardly see across the street it was raining so hard. Then some small hail started. We had a local station broadcasting on Phil's iPad. One of the major streets we live by is called Northwest Expressway. Well, one of the storm chasers/meteorologists for the station we were watching is what I would call... a drama queen.  He gets SO excited about storms that he almost makes a huge deal about everything. Well, as they are talking about rotation somewhere nearby, this guy cuts them off and starts screaming "NORTHWEST EXPRESSWAY! NORTHWEST EXPRESSWAY!!". Phil happened to be doing something else at that point outside of the room and I didn't know what was going on. So I start panicing. I yelled Phil's name repeatedly while picking up Jillian and the iPad. I start running down the hall toward the basement stairs. At this point, Phil is next to me asking what's happening. About that time, I can hear the hail and it. is. LOUD. I mean, I thought the doors were going to breakdown. As we get to the top of the stairs, the lights flash off and on. I start to think this means a tornado is on top of us. We had to push a table out of the way and we quickly got down the dark flight of stairs. Once we got down there, we sat in some dusty chairs to catch our breath. Phil took the iPad and listened for a moment. Turns out, the meteorologist screaming our street? He meant further north than our location. Awesome. Well, better safe than sorry right? After a few moments, the power was back on for good. (I believe we're on the same grid as a local hospital so that's why we had power.) We then discovered that both of our cell phones are still in the nursery. I offered to run up and get them. As I got to the top of the stairs, the hail is still pounding even though the rain has lightened a bit. I looked ahead and I could see glass shattering and falling out of the panes. It was unnerving! I ran to the nursery as fast as I could, grabbed everything we brought with us and took it back to the basement. After another 45 minutes or so, we ended up deciding to head home. We were in between storms and no other storms seemed to have any rotation or meso-cyclones. When we got back to the apartments, one of the exits was completely blocked by fallen trees and we could tell it was a mess. We hurried inside and surveyed the damage. I'm still shocked that not a single glass item we possess was even cracked. We did lose the programs to my {hopefully} future SIL's med school graduation and a few pages of home information for our house search. Other than that, we didn't even really have water damage. All cats were accounted for with no injures. It was quite a night for sure. 

Obviously, Phil finally finishing his degree opened some kind of cosmic force! Yeesh.

{Completely oblivious to the past 48 hours}

My family and I are huge Calvin and Hobbes fans. In fact, we all own at least 1 book personally. I just went through the series where Calvin's family is robbed while they were out of town for a wedding. There is a particular strip where the dad talks about how he always thought grown-ups knew what they were doing. As a child, he never worried because he thought his parents had all the answers. Had he known most of adulthood would be ad lib, he wouldn't have been in such a hurry to grown up. While a part of me is happy with where we are in life right now, I can agree to this. That's kind of how I felt Tuesday night. Despite being freaked out a little bit, I still had to keep it together for Jillian's sake and safety. {Yes mom and dad, that was me holding it together. Is that you laughing? I can hear you across the country you know...}

I'm so very thankful May is over for so many reasons. We get to move on as a family and find a new normal. If only the new normal included a real window and not just a piece of plywood. I guess beggars can't be choosers :)