Thankful

The holidays are over, and I think it took me a couple days to recover. Kinley was pretty fussy on Sunday and Monday after we got back so we've been doing a lot of nursing and a lot of snuggling, and I've just been enjoying it. We celebrated Christmas with both of our families and then celebrated my dad's birthday. We decided to head back home to Temple after my dad's birthday party on Saturday. It was supposed to start raining and storming bad on Sunday. We wanted to try to avoid that, plus, we wanted to give Colt a little breather before he started back to work. We were watching the news on Saturday and trying to time leaving my parents to avoid storms and tornado warnings for the Sulphur Springs area. We avoided that, but little did we know, that the Dallas area was about to get hit even worse. We started listening to the radio and calling Colt's family on the phone about the weather. We were planning on staying on I-30 and exiting 635 to get to 20 and then 35 to head back home. However, after listening and looking at the weather, Colt decided we better exit early, before 635, and try to stay south of the tornado warnings that were being issued. We exited in Royse City, and it's a very good thing we did! Literally 5 minutes later, we looked out of the vehicle to the right and you could see a tornado. I would guess it was about 10 miles from us. It was huge and we kept seeing it light up the sky everytime it would hit something electrical I'm guessing. Let's just say Colt made it a priority to get us to his parent's house in Forney to get us off the road. It was scary and even more scary because Kinley was in the car. If we would've stayed on I-30 and not exited, the timing would've been awfully close, too close, on when the tornado cut through in Garland. We waited the storms out and watched the weather for an hour or two in Forney before getting back on the road to head home. Multiple tornados ended up occurring that night in the Dallas area. The Garland and Rowlett areas were hit hard, as well as the Wylie and Red Oak areas. The devastation looks awful. So far, the death count is at 11 still I believe. Several of those deaths occurred along the highway in Garland. I can't imagine what all of the families are going through that lost loved ones. Hundreds and hundreds of families also lost everything they own. It's awful to think about what it would be like to basically only have the clothes that you're wearing left out of all your belongings and having to rummage through what little is left of your home. Flooding started on Sunday, along with colder weather, so I've heard that's made recovery efforts even more difficult. I'm also seeing all the pictures of all the lost dogs and dogs getting found in the rummage days later, and that breaks my heart too. My brother actually had to go work a shift last night and guard one of the hit neighborhoods. Like they did in Forney a while back, and I guess every event like this, there are looters trying to steal things from the neighborhoods that were hit. The whole things is awful, and I'm definitely thinking about all of the families that were involved and affected. One of the moms in a group that I am in on Facebook that has a baby about Kinley's age, as well as another kid, lost everything. Her GoFundMe site has a picture of the bathtub they were taking shelter in. It's basically the only thing left of their entire house. It's amazing that they all made it out ok. Things like this definitely puts things into perspective, and make you thankful for what you have. 

Here's a picture of one of Garland tornado that is circulating the internet. This is pretty much exactly what it looked like when we were driving. We just kept seeing it the sky light up bright blue.