Tornado - 2

The only light we had for a couple of days,

 

besides the sunshine coming through the windows (and thank God for that) was two oil lamps and a couple of flashlights. 

Someone asked me what we did for entertainment.  He read and I crocheted by flashlight!

 

Luckily, it wasn't too cold out that first day/night.  On Monday, My Shug took the afternoon off of work, and went to town and bought a heater that you hook up to a propane tank.  This is what we used to heat our room.  It worked very well.

 

Sometimes too well!  Dixie Doodle got too warm!

 

 My Uncle loaned us a generator and we used it to keep our refrigerator and freezer going, so we wouldn't lose all of the food I put up this past year.

 And we got water from a spring that is on our property.

 And peeps, those are the basics in a situation like this, and we were fortunate, because we had them.  We would use the bucket of water to flush the toilet, and we had jugs of water from the well to drink, brush our teeth, and wash our face.  No hot water.

As you can see from these pics, people in our area know we have a flowing well, and they came to get water from it.

 And THANK YOU Mom and Dad for the use of your shower every day!

On Monday, after going to Mom and Dad's for a shower, I went to town to see if our old house, and our neighbor's house in town, was still standing.  She (our neighbor)  had just come to see me the other day and told me they were leaving on vacation Sunday and wouldn't be back until Thursday.  Luckily, our street was not damaged.  I did not go to see the devastation all around it.  Roads were closed, state police were around, everything was a mess.  Traffic was awful, so I came back home.

I did drive around our block.  Sorry about the blurry picture.  The only thing that separates these houses from our old house is an alley.  That big clump above is a root ball to a tree.  I snapped the pictures as I drove by.  I didn't want to stop.

 

 And this (below) was around the corner.

(Kathy E if you still read my blog, this was the guy with the copper roof.  Can't remember his name.)

 

 

After My Shug got the heater and the generator running, we decided to pick up all of the limbs in our yard.  Our neighbor had a burn pile going in his pit, so we figured it was as good of time as any.  It was still really windy outside.  We loaded all of the limbs on the tractor and drove it to the burn pit.  Five times.

 I was driving the tractor at the time and was really nervous about it going in to the pit!  I did good!!

 

 You can see how big some of the limbs were...the size of small trees.

 

 That night we went out to eat, and on our way home, this was the view. 

So peaceful looking. 

 Here are a few extra pics I took that I wanted to share and save.  This is of our pond. 

  This is right after the storm.

 This is of the house....you wouldn't have known anything happened.

As a matter of fact, it's like that all over town.  I called my parents twice to see if they were ok.  Mom said, "Cindy what are you talking about, it's barely raining here!" 

 And you have no idea how thankful I am that we spent our summer working on these porches.  Go to this post if you didn't see the porches before July!  The upstairs end (on the right-balcony) would not be standing, we are sure of it.

 The beeyard....not one hive blew over.  Phew!

 And us...on the tractor!

 Cindy Bee