a not-so-good friday
Well, we didn’t end up going to the Cardinals game on Friday night. And as much as I really wanted to go, especially to hear some of my students sing the National Anthem, I am so happy that we didn’t end up going.
If you haven’t heard, we had some pretty devastating storms here in St. Louis on Friday night. When we turned on the TV around 5 PM and saw tornado warnings in some neighboring counties, we felt it was in our best interest to stay home.
We sat down to dinner around 7 PM (late for us), took one bit of our delicious homemade pizza, and the tornado sirens started going off. As much as I love a good summer storm, I absolutely hate tornadoes. After being stuck in Busch Stadium during a pretty severe storm in 2006, I never EVER want to be in that situation again. But, even though I was thankful to be home, I was still scared out of my mind.
We were lucky enough to never lose power, although we did end up losing our satellite signal. Luckily, Dave Murray (seriously, the greatest weatherman EVER… I have a huge massive nerdy crush on him because he is so super smart) was streaming online and we were able to keep up-to-date on the tornado situation. Just 10 miles south of us, a tornado was spotted on the ground, with reports of damage. That was our signal to move to this little setup:
Our fooseball table with a kitchen table on top of it. I don’t know how much it would have protected us, but I felt a little bit safer under there. And so happy to have my wonderful husband by my side, begging me to breathe and calm down. (I think he was more concerned about the baby than a tornado hitting our house. He’s already the best daddy ever.) We heard hail hitting our house, along with some wind and some extremely close lightening, but luckily (VERY lucky) for us, no tornadoes. Although I am pretty sure that is the closest they have ever been to our house.
Like I said, we were lucky. The tornadoes stayed away from our home, but that wasn’t true for 220 other homes destroyed by the storms, along with the main terminal at Lambert Airport and several other houses damaged. The damage is incredible – and I say incredible because there were no serious injuries and no one was killed. God definitely was watching over St. Louis Friday night. He might not have spared homes, but He spared lives, and to that I am grateful.
Please keep St. Louis in your thoughts and prayers as many are still picking up the pieces of their lives that we destroyed in the storms.
Once the storm had passed, we decided it was still early enough to go out and get some ice cream, after all, it was Frozen Custard Friday. Plus, I have to admit, I am a gawker and wanted to check out the damage in our city, of which there was very little, luckily.
We didn’t go too far, just a little past Fritz’s to get some tried-and-true ice cream at Dairy Queen. I hate that the don’t have a bunch of different “specialties” to choose from, but one blizzard (seriously, so hard NOT to say concrete) did catch my eye.
The Midnight Truffle blizzard, which just so happened to be the Blizzard of the Month. You really can’t go wrong with chocolate truffles mixed in ice cream.
Matt went for the Turtle Pecan Cluster. (We had trouble determining which one was which. And honestly, I have no idea exactly what was in either of them.) He actually was able to admit that mine was much, much better! He is usually the master of the menu, but I won this time around!
It was a nice ending to a not-so-pleasant night. Luckily, the rest of the weekend was much better and filled with family, church, and food. We had a wonderful Easter weekend, and I am thankful everyday that Jesus’ died for my sins so that I can one day be in Heave with Him.