Last night about 6:15 I packed my three kids up and hit the road, headed towards our local Lexus dealership, which is my husband’s place of employ. I was going to drop the big kids off with him and then shoot down the road with Jonah in my van to my cousin Anna’s (you know, Em’s sister, the third SuperCousin) for a “Last Oprah Show” party. As I was driving down the highway I noticed that the skies were looking pretty ominous.
I had the radio on, and as we pulled up to the intersection right in front of the dealership, I herd the “ehhhhnn ehhhhhnn ehhhnnn” of the National Weather Service bulletin notification. WHICH told me there was a tornado warning for the town where Anna lives, where I was going.
So, scratch that.
I pulled into the dealership and told Bobby we were staying with him at the dealership until the storm blew over . Joshua caught wind of what was going on and immediately started freaking out. He is SUPER-terrified of tornadoes. Last year when he was in kindergarten and they started having tornado drills, he started to get freaked out about the possibilities. Any thunder at all and he wells up with tears and goes into a panic. I took him aside and prayed with him, which seemed to help a little. I told him we were in a very safe building (which is true, that place is very solid, and we were away from the windows in the show room.) We thanked God for being in control of the weather. I am not sure this really helped calm his fears but hopefully he will remember that next time!
The van was in the shop, so we started a movie for the kids (yay, van DVD player!) in part to drown out the noise of the thunder and lightning, as the storm was moving toward us. Bobby and I nervously checked AccuWeather on his computer and then I got back in the van with the kids and tried to be super-cheerful. Unfortunately for me, Toy Story 3 playing in the van was not enough to distract Joshua from his fear. He kept peppering me with questions.
Bobby had gone into the dealership to get a peek out the windows and while he was up there it started getting LOUD. Pretty soon he hustled back into the shop and told me we needed to get inside the main part of the dealership. The General Manager was going into emergency mode and wanted everyone in the interior. We grabbed all three kids and ran, which did NOT do much to assuage Joshua’s fears, especially since once we were out of the van he could hear that it sounded like 500 giants with giant hammers were pounding on the roof of the dealership.
They moved us into a small room with a tv and very kindly brought the kids water and me a coke. We watched the TV so we could see how and where the storm was moving. This was good and bad, as Joshua could see that it really was right where we were. But we could also see how fast it was moving away. And after a few minutes of many many questions, he finally started to calm down, and it finally started to QUIET down.
Bobby was back in the shop for most of this time because water had started coming into the shop and he wanted to make sure the van was ok.
When he came back, he had this in his hands:
Holy Hail Stones, Batman! They were even bigger when he found them, they had gotten a little melty by the time he got to us.
After about 20 more minutes, it was deemed safe for us to go home. There was still some thunder and lightning but now that we were safe, I was finally free to stop “keeping it together” for my kids and I was pretty stressed out the whole way home. We didn’t get home until after 8 pm but at least we were all safe!
I am so thankful our van was in the shop, because a lot of the cars at the dealership were damaged pretty significantly by the hail. But thanks to God’s protection, the Rapson family escaped with only an emotionally scarred seven-year-old and a nervous wreck of a mama!
All of my family was safe. My brother’s family in Xenia lost a couple of windows and some siding. How did all my other local peeps fare last night?
