Why yes, that was a tornado that started in our back yard!

A week ago today I was headed to Denver for a conference. I was scheduled to return Wednesday night. Melissa had sent me a text letting me know there were bad storms in the area right around dinner time. After an afternoon of meetings, a couple of coworkers and I were going to see the Denver Nuggets at their last home game of the season. As we were getting dinner and about ready to sit down for tip off, I shot a quick text home to see if the weather had passed. This was the response I received:

We've lost two trees, one is on our house. The house next door is destroyed. Should I call your dad?

It was at this point I set all of my food down, told my coworkers they better go on into the game and I'd be in later. I then began calling anyone and everyone I could to get someone over to the house. Everyone was ok, but indeed the house next to ours was toast! After what seemed like a million phone calls to friends, insurance, airline, etc... I had done all I could from half way across the country and went inside to watch the second half of the basketball game. Melissa and the kids all spent the night at friends and family's houses. I changed travel plans to leave the first thing Tuesday morning and returned around lunch to find the following:

Crane removing trees from our roof

This tree put about 18 inch hole in our roof

Neighbors house in shambles!

Looked like bomb exploded trees everywhere

Thankfully our neighbor had gone to dinner and wasn't killed! After several days of clearing, cutting, and splitting, we now have enough firewood to last 2 winters in Alabama. We were able to get the hole in our roof repaired before the 2nd round of storms rolled in Friday evening so we don't have any water damage that I've found so far. It could have been a lot worse!

For several days we had gawkers all over the place, we should have charged admission to come down our road. Some people actually stopped, got out, and took pictures! Melissa was interviewed by a local tv station and the National Weather Service even came by to take photos and ask questions. It took several days, but it was finally determined that yes, we did have a tornado drop down in our back yard and shoot across the neighborhood. No wonder Melissa and kids never heard the sound of a train because it started in our yard! From the National Weather Service:

0727 PM     TORNADO          5 S BIRMINGHAM          33.45N 86.79W
04/11/2011  F1               JEFFERSON          AL   NWS STORM SURVEY

           PATH WAS .4 MILES IN LENGTH AND 100 YARD IN WIDTH. PEAK
           WINDS WERE ESTIMATED AT 100 MPH. AFFECTED THE VESTAVIA
           HILLS AREA. DAMAGE PATH WAS FROM THE VESTAVIA HILLS
           POLICE DEPARTMENT...ACROSS BIRD PARK...TO JUST NORTH OF
           THE VESTAVIA HILLS COUNTRY CLUB. NUMEROUS LARGE HARDWOOD
           TREES WERE UPROOTED...INCLUDING 30 PINES THAT WERE
           SNAPPED IN BIRD PARK. ONE HOME SUSTAINED POTENTIALLY
           SIGNIFICANT STRUCTURAL DAMAGE...WITH OTHER HOMES
           SUSTAINING DAMAGE DUE TO TREES FALLING ON THEM.

Vomiting House

Last year our family went through a spiritual transformation due to a lot of factors. We came to a point where we didn't feel the Christian-American dream was exactly aligned with the Gospel and began making some changes. One of the biggest was we downsized our house. Our missionary friends from Guatemala who stayed with us recently had some differing takes because they had never both stayed with us. Erin continued to comment how big and nice our house was as compared to hers in Guatemala City. On the other hand, Jose, who had stayed with us in our previous house said, wow, you really did downsize! Perspective makes such a huge difference.

There are lots of things we like about our new digs but it is challenging at times with 7 people bumping around inside of it. We laughed this morning as we commented it appeared the house had vomited already this Saturday. One of the things we do miss is storage and pantry space. After a recent grocery store run I came home to see the kitchen looking like we were preparing for meals on wheels.

You just about have to have a degree in warehouse logistics to utilize the cabinets we have for food storage for 7 people! Thank goodness we have deep counters and can use the corners for storage of easy access stuff for the kids. So while some would say, what a mess, my perspective is at least I have the empty counter space to use, the ability to have the food, and thankful just about all of our kids can self serve themselves with some level of reasonableness!

Perspective is always an important ingredient.