Our "30% Chance of Rain" Weekend

Saturday was fun.
We went on a little date (fridge shopping!!) and we finished earlier then we had told the babysitter, so instead of going home early we went out to grab a quick bite.  When we went into the restaurant it was raining just a bit.  When we left this is what was happening..


We decided to get home as quickly as possible.  Unfortunately this is what we ran into.

We hid underneath an underpass during the worst of the hail.  We were lucky to get there quickly when the hail started, within just s couple minutes there were about 20-25 cars parked under there! When the hail stopped and the lights went out it was just pure chaos.  All driving rules basically went out the window as people attempted to get where ever they were going.



After seeing signs fly past us, hail damaging cars, road signs almost underwater, telephone poles floating down the road, cars stalled and flooded, stop lights completely not working...we just really really wanted to get home!

It took some quick thinking, great driving skills, and a bit of illegal driving (driving on the wrong side of the road is totally okay in emergency situations right?) But we started to get closer to our neighborhood. We turned down one street only to be waved off by a man in his yard yelling how the water was too high.  In the distance I could see 3 cars stuck in the middle of the road.



Right after we made it to our neighborhood we were happy- so close! It had only taken about 1 hour to go 2 miles! But as we got closer it was clear the water was too high.  Right before our engine was about to die Chris hit the gas and got us into a random driveway.  An old Asian man was outside (thankfully the son came out who spoke English!) and they let us park our car at their house.  They even gave us two umbrellas to get home with.I pulled off my cute sandals and we started walking home.

(you can see the how high the water was on our car by where the leaves are on the grill)

The water was freezing.  It was over 80 that day but the hail made the water ice cold.

we would not have made good pioneers by the way

 Thankfully our neighbors who were watching our kids at our house were great.  The kids had fun playing and didn't realize how scary the situation could be (thunder, lightening, flooding, no power...)

The power went out at our house around 4:30, and since we didn't know when it would come back on we had the kids collect some of the hail in bags and stuck it in the fridge.  Smart eh?

(part of our backyard)

 

We had a fun night- dinner was fabulous (hamburgers with fresh fire roasted chiles and roasted asparagus), the kids had fun playing with flashlights, and singing happy birthday and attempting to blow out all the candles.

After the kids went to bed we busted out our favorite game- Sorry.  Possibly played the most thrilling and nail biting game of our marriage and the power came back on around 10:00

Sunday morning we took a walk back to get the car and dropped of the umbrellas.  We had a ton of leaves to clear off our driveway and sidewalk but by the time we left for church you could hardly tell there had been a storm.

(this is the same street we were walking in before with water up to our knees)

(Some of the damage in our neighborhood)

We're glad that we didn't really have any big problems- we were lucky.  This week we're going to work on making sure we're ready for hurricane season!