Another First

We experienced another first here in TX. Our first "big" storm. We've had some pretty crazy thunderstorms here. A lot of them have been while Todd was gone, but a couple have been while he was home. This was one of them and I was SO glad. This was the first time I was truly worried about the storm.

I woke up a minute before everything hit, but I am not sure what woke me. It might have been how quiet it was because the electricity had gone out or the lightning. It was crazy! The lightning was flashing every few seconds...yes seconds. One right after another. Todd and I looked out our bedroom window but couldn't see a whole lot. Then came the hail. The noise was also crazy. It was SO loud. I thought for sure Todd's car would have dents all over in it, and I thought our windows would break. I heard the boys cry out for us so I went to find them. TC and Titus had bolted out of bed, and Tobyn and Tate were huddled on their bed afraid to go anywhere, where was Tanner? Fast asleep...the whole time...little boy didn't wake up once.

We gathered everyone in our room and "rode" it out. It was probably 3:30 before I calmed down and fell back asleep. But I seemed to be the only one. The boys went back to sleep, but in my room. The hail only lasted a few minutes but the lightning took a while to go away. The electricity was turned back on fairly quickly. Much quicker than I would have thought, but I guess they're prepared for this sort of thing.

We looked out the window once and had a fence, looked out again a few mins later and parts of it were missing. This is what we saw in the morning:

This was our front porch at 1 am. Those are shingles, my wind chime that was hanging by my door, and Titus's shoe (it was left out side)

This was the hail piled up in the corner:

This is the size of the hail. Todd's ring is just slightly bigger than a quarter:
We were so lucky we only had the damage we did. A few shingles, things tossed around the yard a little, and missing fence panels. (Not a dent or scratch on Todd's car) Houses just south of us had windows broken because of the hail, and some trees blew over, I think some cars might have been damaged also. Some counties around us had tornado warnings. Again, I'm glad Todd was home. I know it's a little silly I was so worried. After all I did experience the micro-burst in UT and have been through some other crazy storms, but it was just nuts waking up to it! I guess things are just a little more intense during the middle of the night. I am also sure this won't be the last of the "big" storms and things could be SO much worse. But I hope not....at least for a long time!