Jump back, throw me down!

I am a native Oklahoman. I was born knowing the tornado procedures and precautions, hearing the sirens, and watching Gary England on TV.

Now I'm typically a bit of a worrier, which my husband can attest to, but I know that really worrying about a tornado is not an effective use of time. What is effective is gathering supplies and creating a safe place in your home.
Especially when the sky looks like this:

So I was a little perturbed when Eli started making fun of me for carefully going through my mental list of items and gathering them up in our safe place, a.k.a. the hallway. And I didn't go crazy, but I felt like as a wife and adopted mother of 2 cute pups I should protect my family should a tornado turn towards us. I said this and he laughed at me. So I (alone) gathered the blanket, the water, the flashlights and candles, dog leashes and food, and put them in the hallway. Then Sadie and Fenway told their dad that he was not allowed in the safe place with us. (Haha! I would have obviously let Eli in if a tornado was on its way to us, but he would have had to argue with the pups about it first.) After I felt that we were as ready as we could get, I went outside to look at what was going on.

I'm pretty sure all of my neighbors were outside, too.

We live at the end of a cul-de-sac, so we have the advantage of seeing everyone. The white car in the right corner actually turned down our street and was following the storm. (Not the best vehicle for that activity if you want my opinion.) You can see a couple of the neighbors outside here, but you can see more here.

And the white car has circled around and is watching the storm roll by. It was moving across Highway 9 (about 1 mile from our house) very quickly. We're lucky that it was fairly small in comparison to what it built up to by Eli's parents' house.

This was a Love's Truck Stop on I-40 and Choctaw Road.

There's no need to panic and no need to worry, but disregard your spouse's scoffing and be prepared. There were only 5 fatalities because of last night's storms, but it could have been worse. My goal is to create a tornado kit in a toolbox or some other type of easily accessible carrier so that my family will be ready at a moment's notice...and then I won't have to go through the mess of putting the flashlights and dog leashes away when the storm passes. Do like the Boy Scouts and be prepared.

Read more about it here.

Side note: This author does not claim to be the grammatical genius of certain contributing authors of this blog. I do, however, make every attempt at creating the most error-free entries as possible. I will (most likely, at some point) use ellipses and multiple exclamation points to show emotion - much to my husband's dismay. I know they are grammatically incorrect, but they're being used in a blog with four followers...I don't think it will really have that much of an impact on the greater good. That is all. Mrs. Hammie out.