Stormy Times

Sunday night our area was hit very hard by tornados. We just barely missed the action. The path was less than a 1/2 mile from us. There were a lot of homes destroyed but fortunatly there were no life threatening injuries. We had been under a tornado watch the entire day. Well around 9:00, the thunder begin to roll and the lighting got pretty bad. We turned on the news to discover we were now under a tornado warning and that we were about 45 minutes away from being right in it's path.
The sirens were blaring outside and I was beginning to get nervous. As we watched the news we could see that it was getting closer and stronger and once we realized we were only about 15 minutes away from the action, we hauled it to the bathroom. So all 3 of us climbed into the tub (note to self, have a bigger tub in our next home). Bobby took the mattress off of Brayden's bed and we covered ourselves with it. Brayden wasn't exactly sure what to think. We stayed calm, so that we wouldn't scare him - but obviously it's not normal to climb into the tub with mommy and daddy and put a mattress on top of you. I explained to him what a tornado was and that we were doing this "just in case" it comes near us and I assured him that we would be fine. I don't think he believed me. He asked if tornados made "people died". I was honest and said that yes sometimes it does, but it's because those people didn't get in the tub and put mattresses on them.... I think he felt better about being in the tub after that. So much better that he relaxed and went to sleep. So there we sat with our legs cramped up under us, holding hands. I could hear the rain begin to pound and then it sounded like someone was beating on all the windows and walls. It was hail.....big hail. About 5 minutes after the rain had subsided, we heard the "all clear" from the TV.
Brayden woke up as we were getting out of the tub. We all went outside afterwards to check out the damage and saw a bunch of neighbors doing the same. Other than the swing blowing over, we had no damage. Everyone was outside collecting hail. The biggest we had was golf ball size, but some areas had hail the size of softballs. They showed one yard on the news that was covered in hail. It looked like snow. I've never seen anything like it.
So now that we have survived the tornado, they are talking about snow next week .... gotta love this Arkansas weather!!