Thankful Thursday

If you are wondering, no, I am not thankful for hail! Last night was an eventful night to say the least. See it was my friend Lisa's birthday so me and some girlfriends had planned to take her out for a good time. I had known all day that we were going to have severe weather. Ya see...I am a little obsessed with the weather and terrified of tornadoes. Here is a little of how the evening went...

I am walking out the door kissing and hugging everyone bye and telling Rob, "We are going to have bad weather so please keep an eye on it."
Rob: "It will be fine. God is in control."
I am thinking, "Yes I know that, but please keep the kids safe."
Rob doesn't normally pay much attention to the weather and will go to bed while I stay up at night to make sure we aren't going to get blown away. If we have warnings he will be like, "Let's watch a movie." Um...what!? We need to watch the weather!
Okay back to last night. I leave, we get to dinner, look at the menu, and I am checking my tablet. Things are looking precarious! Right then, I get a call and couple texts from Rob saying,
"We have a tornado warning."
Uh oh!
I call him and he proceeds to tell me it is on it's way. I ask him if he thinks he should go somewhere with a basement. Of course he says no. So he puts the kids in the bath tub. Which let me tell you, this is a huge deal. He has NEVER done this. Me, well let's just say they have been in the tub a few times because of bad weather. Ok, so I am at the restaurant and I think, "I am upstairs by a window. I am going to talk to someone to find out where we should go." I find the manager and the convo goes a little something like this:
Me: Um, hi...we have tornadoes coming towards us. Where is your safe place."
As you can imagine he is laughing at me. Not out loud, but I see it all over his face. He then says, "I am not really sure," in a very calm...too calm...voice. What! You are not sure! I said, "Well, will you let me and my friends in your cooler should it get to bad?"
Him: "Sure."
I head back up to the table where the waiter is taking our order. I am so sick to my stomach I can't even think about food. I order anyway. Then my phone is blowing up. Mom, Rob, Dad, friends checking on my. Rob is texting things like:
"This is insane."
"I have never seen anything like this."
"I am not going near a window. Hail is so big and hitting the window so hard I am afraid it is going to shatter."
"My car is going to be destroyed."
"Our power is out, can you tell me what is going on?"
So now, I am seriously freaking out!!!! All of my friends are on their phones too. I tell my friends about the huge hail and 2 of them decide to leave and go move their cars to the garage. Bad idea! Then the sirens start going off where we are. We all get up and I find my manager friend again. He walks up to me, laughing, and I say, "The sirens are going off we need to go to your cooler."
Him: "I don't think that is necessary."
Me: "Can we go to your back hallway?" (The bartender had told me this was their "safe place")
Him: "Well, I can see if someone can clean it out."
Clearly this guy does not want to help me. I say, "Girls, we are hunkering down in the bathroom." About this time my 2 friends that went to move their cars come walking in...SOAKED! We head to the bathroom, where the wet girls are using dryers to dry off, we are laughing and listening to the hail. After a couple minutes we come out and go eat. So much for a fun night out for Lisa's birthday! It will definitely be one she will remember.
So I get home and Rob had put the hail in the freezer so I could see it. Pretty impressive. I could tell he was a little shaken up. His car does have some damage.
All this to say...

Today I am thankful that my house is still standing.

I think about how scared I was.
We didn't even have a tornado that was a mile wide covering 6 miles.
My house is still standing.
Rob and the kids were safe.
All my trees and their limbs are not blown over.
My things are not blown all over the neighborhood.
My power is back on.

My heart and prayers go out to everyone that has been devastated by severe weather the last couple of months.