Better Safe Than Sorry

Well, I (Sarah) learned that I am an even bigger chicken-baby than I thought. This revelation came after a line of very severe storms went through my parents neighborhood (in the Dallas-area) while we were visiting them on Wednesday night. At about 3:45am or so, I woke up to constant lightning and thunder, and I was pretty sure that I heard the tornado sirens going off. Not good. The electricity had gone off in the house, and I really thought that I was hearing "freight train-like" winds outside. I was just certain a tornado was coming our way. The wind was rattling my parents windows and the weather-stripping at the bottom of their front door really loud. I just knew we were gonners. :-) I went in to get Noelle out of her crib and went back to the hall. At this point, Chris wakes up to me holding Noelle in the hall asking my parents, "Is there a tornado?" That got him out of bed pretty fast. Luckily, my mom has an iPhone, so she was able to look up the radar on the internet. We found that there weren't any tornados in the area, thank goodness. By this time I felt pretty silly, but I was still kinda scared. I rocked Noelle, which was wonderful. She never sits still long enough to rock, and definitely doesn't let me hold her like a baby anymore. After a while I asked her if she wanted to go night-night, and she said, "Rock more." Well, OK...she twisted my arm into that one. I was really surprised that Noelle never got upset at the thunder and lightning. She was such a trooper. We eventually got the electricity back after about an hour, and we were able to go back to sleep. The next morning, I felt kinda dumb, like I had over-reacted...until we ventured out and saw all of this damage to houses nearby. Then, I didn't feel so crazy. Luckily, my parents didn't have any damage at their house. Their neighbors across the street still don't have electricity, though, after a day and a half!!

What's crazy is that growing up I wanted to be a meteorologist, and even thought I'd want to be a severe weather storm chaser. After this experience, I think I'd rather be in a cellar. Can anyone help me dig one this weekend??