Swimming!

We go swimming once or twice a week at the local city pool. There's a kids' splash area, slides, and a swiftly moving river. Elizabeth's favorite part is the river. Whenever she sees her swimsuit at home, she swings it around with a big grin on her face and says "Ss! Ss! Ss!"

Adam got a waterproof camera case and we took some fun pictures and videos.

The Dallas Arboretum

Elizabeth likes to push the stroller

The Poetry Garden

A mansion across the lake

Folding her arms for prayer

Our First Tornado Warning

Forming tornado

We've always wanted to live somewhere closer to natural disasters. Yes, it sounds insane, but we were bored in Idaho because nothing ever happened. (Well, there was that one time that some boys drove into a river and Adam rescued them, but that was it). Adam is skilled and well-prepared should anything ever happen, anhd now we're closer to the action than we ever imagined.

On April 7th, we experienced our first tornado warning. I was driving back from the temple and the misty noontime turned to a downpour. There was lots of thunder and lightening, and I quite enjoyed the storm.

Adam and Elizabeth were out on the porch watching the rain when I got home. We wend inside and I put Elizabeth down for a much-needed nap (Daddy wore her out playing).

Five minutes later, we heard what sounded like tornado sirens in the distance. Weird. I didn't think much of it until I remembered that it was the day before  they usually test the sirens. Intrigued, more than anything, we sat on the couch and listened, wondering if there was a short in a siren somewhere far away. Ten minutes later, our nearby sirens started wailing.

After sounding for about 5 minutes (the test usually runs for 1 or 2), they cut out. Silence. Then a booming man's voice "TORNADO. WARNING." echoed out over the city several times. It seemed like the only thing out there.

We still weren't convinced. The rain had stopped. There wasn't even a breeze blowing. The gray clouds were hurrying along to the north, but no wind to speak of. Thunder boomed occasionally. We got on the computer to check the radar map. It was the biggest storm in the United States at the time, with large red areas on either side of Plano and Dallas. Everything to the south was clear, and since I'd seen the clouds moving north, I was unconcerned. Then the sirens went off consecutively for a good half hour, stopping to repeat ominously "TORNADO. WARNING." "TORNADO. WARNING."

We were mostly amused with the novelty of actually being in the middle of a huge storm. The sirens took a break. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted. We stood out on the porch enjoying the weather and watching dubiously for any signs of a tornado (roaring wind, a constant rumble, a greenish tint to the sky). The sky did turn black for about 15 minutes, which was kind of fun to watch.

Finally Adam decided he was still going to go to the temple. I wasn't really concerned. We saw no reason to be afraid. It's not like the voice on the siren was saying "TORNADO. IMMINENT. FIND SHELTER" (we found out that they never say that).  So off he went. As I watched him go from the porch, I looked up at the clouds again. Now they were moving south. 

Furthermore, they had a grandiose counterclockwise motion. I realized, after they passed over, that I had been staring right into a forming funnel! The swirling clouds had appeared to be much lower, and that's why I could see their motion so well.

This is kind of what I saw. Not really funnel-shaped, right?

Again, more fascinated than anything, I checked the weather map. To my surprise, the entire storm system was now east of us, instead of west. It started pouring rain and went on for a while. I also checked the news online and was shocked to see, right on the front page, videos and pictures of fully formed tornadoes tossing semi trucks! 8 had touched down and had done a lot of damage. I had watched the one fly overhead that was destined to destroy Forney.

Adam was oblivious to all the excitement. When he got home from the temple (driving through pouring rain) I showed him all the reports that were popping up and we joked that we would have been those dumb people outside that died because they were out on the porch watching the tornado as it touched down. We wondered what we should have done. We are in a second story apartment, after all. There's not really a good place to shelter. Without the internet, we would have had no clue how bad the storm was. The rain would have hidden any funnels. What would happen if we lost power, cell phone signals, etc.? We're still not really sure, but we have our 72-hour kits ready if we need them.

Elizabeth slept through the entire thing.