TWISTER!!!

Wow - what an exciting weekend this turned out to be! And not necessarily in a good way...


We had planned a camping trip BEFORE we knew Chad was going to be out of town until Friday. That means that I get to be home alone with the munchkins as well as trying to get everything packed for our trip. (Not to mention... packing for any outing lasting longer than ten minutes requires a U-Haul with these two princesses.)

So, I am making a last-minute run to the store to get spaghetti noodles. That and garlic bread are my contribution to dinner Saturday, and although I have about 15 boxes of pasta in my cabinet, they encompass every shape from rotini to macaroni to penne... but no spaghetti. I load up the girls who are both cranky and tired and head out to Meijer. I grab what I need and get home without too much fanfare. Once home, I tuck a kid under each arm and toss them in the door, then run out to the car to grab the groceries. I didn't notice Chad was home, nor did I see the card table behind the back door wobbling. I chucked the girls in the door, then pulled it closed as I ran out to grab the food, and apparently the card table fell right on Elianna's head! At first Chad thought it was just a bump, so he picked her up to calm her down... and suddenly there is blood running down his shirt. Yep, there was a little metal piece on the table that gouged her head. Her took her to the shower to clean up, and I grabbed her dress so I could pre-treat it before it stained. (Oops, did I write that out loud?) It is actually a tiny little cut, but being on her head it bled like crazy. We eventually get on the road, and I ask if he got directions. Yep. Did he get them on Mapquest? Nope. Now, let me pause to say that I have always been our official Trip Navigator, since before we even had Mapquest. (Yes, I mapped our route with an old-fashioned map and a highlighter.) Now, when we are planning a trip, I print out directions, maps, and whatever notes I think we'll need and staple them together in neat little bundles of guidance. I was a bit leery of handing over my navigational responsibilities, but I was tired and ready to get on the road. As we are heading out to the car, the phone rings. Aunt Anne is calling from the campground (they went a day earlier) and warning us that a severe storm watch is in effect so drive carefully. Greeeeeeat. We get in the car, and I ask to see the directions. They consist of some handwritten scrawl on the back of a page from his daily calendar. You know, the kind of calendar where you tear off a sheet every day, and then use them to write your grocery list on. I asked, "This is it?" He says, "Yep." No mileage, no exit numbers... just scrawled notes with street names and an "R" or "L" next to each street. This does not bode well. We get on the freeway and we are cruising along. I am going crazy not knowing where we are going. I need E-X-A-C-T information. I mean, how will you have any idea if your exit is the next one or forty miles away?!?? Then, when you get off, how far do you go down each street? 20 yards or 20 miles? WHAT ARE THE ANSWERS TO THESE BURNING QUESTIONS? He doesn't know. Just when I am getting good and stressed... we run head-on into the storm. The radio had been blaring that emergency warning signal, but it still was a bit scary driving into the real thing. Cars lined the shoulder, hazards flashing. We plowed on ahead at about 20 mph, and suddenly I got this sharp pain in my forehead. It's a hereditary thing - my brothers and I get this horrid pain in our forehead... right before a tornado. This can't be happening!!!! I turned up the radio, and sure enough, there was a tornado watch in the county we were driving through. The rain let up a bit, and we drive on... and on, and on, and on. I ask Chad for about the hundredth time "Are you SURE? There was no exit number? No approximate mileage? No landmarks? Hints? Clues? ANYTHING to let us know we are not just driving mindlessly north to Canada?" I think he got sick of my nagging, and after we got through the storm he pulled off and looked at a map in a gas station. (We had forgotten a map, too.) SURPRISE. We were 20 miles north of where we were supposed to be, and the exit he was looking for? It doesn't even exist!!!! (I guess that explains why there was no exit number.) We turned around, and made it to the campground 2 hours late. Poor Aunt Anne was worried sick, assuming the tornadoes had picked us up and carried us off to North Dakota. (It turns out the tornado had hit the town right next to the campground!! Praise the Lord it didn't go any closer - we were all sitting ducks in our campers.)

So, we are at the campground, it is still drizzling rain, there is no power at the park, and everything is closed. Most of the roads are blocked by downed trees, and the humidity is so thick it is choking. Fortunately, the storm cooled the sweltering heat down a bit, so sleeping without our fan wasn't too bad. Everything felt damp, but at least we weren't sweating to death. The weather cleared up the next afternoon, but the power was still out so there wasn't much to do. We had planned on renting a rowboat and hanging out at the lake, but the boat rental was closed and the road to the lake was blocked by trees. We hung out at the campers and played cards with Aunt Anne and Uncle Marcel, took about 37 walks with the girls, and attempted a walk down a nature trail but got lost and ended up on someone's campsite. (oops.) The weather cleared up the day we were leaving and then it was just gorgeous. They took us out for ice cream at a farm with a petting zoo, and Elianna had a blast feeding corn to the goats. I didn't take many pictures, because, well, I was stressed and grumpy and didn't feel like it. When we left to go home, we drove through a little town called Fenton, and we were just shocked at the damage by the tornado. Houses had trees uprooted, tearing up most of their lawns, landscaping on the roof, smashed windows... one house had a tree right through it! It was bad, and less than 5 or 10 miles from where we were camping!!! Yikes. Needless to say, the trip home went much quicker, since we didn't add an extra 40 or so miles to the trip. It was one of those trips where I came home just wiped out!!! So much for a quiet relaxing weekend...