A few years ago, we had a monsterous hail storm that destroyed everything in its path. When I say monsterous, I mean this:
It was the most bizarre thing I have ever witnessed. I had come home from work and Brent was still at school. There were tornado warnings all around us and all of a sudden the tornado sirens were blaring. I called Brent to tell him what was going on because I wasn't sure he knew what the tornado sirens were or what to do. When the sirens go off, it means take shelter immediately. He was in the basement of the pharmacy building so I knew he was safe. After we hung up, I was watching the weather guy on the tv urging people to take cover immediately when all of a sudden, I heard this loud thumping and cracking. Hail. I looked outside and baseball size hail was falling out of the sky all around me. I could hear windows being shattered and hail pounding the roof, threatening to break through. I was a little nervous because I didn't know what was going to happen. I felt any minute the hail was going to break through our windows and ceiling. It was so loud and I could hear things being blown around and shattering outside. I stood in the hallway where there were no windows and waited out the storm. When I finally heard silence, I knew the storm had passed and I could come out. I went outside on the balcony and looked out over the courtyard/pool area. It was a mess. 
With all the glass shattering, I went outside to see what the damage was. My car was under the covered parking and the worst damage it sustained was a hail ball that bounced up and dented the hood. At the pharmacy school, there was no covered parking and the storm came so quickly, there was no time to put Brent's car under cover. Needless to say, his car did not get off so easy.
The sunroof and windshield were cracked all over and one of the other windows had been completely shattered. The rest of the car was a total loss. It was dented from bumper to bumper. Everyone in town sustained some sort of damage. My parents had windows broken at their house. Another family in the ward had grapefruit size hail crash through their roof into their house. For those lucky ones with comprehensive coverage on their cars, the body damage was so significant that insurance totaled their cars out and they were paid accordingly. We didn't have full coverage on Brent's car so we were unable to get it fixed. From then on, we called it the Golf Ball and drove around in complete embarassment of our dented up car.
Fast forward a few years and we come to last night. We were at my parents house eating dinner and an ominous storm began to roll in. The news was saying that there was large hail and tornadoes spotted so plan accordingly and be prepared to take cover. My dad and my brothers and sister-in-law took their cars to find a covered spot to put them. Around here, people will park under anything they can to protect their cars from the hail if they don't have a garage or covered parking of some sort. You will see cars in bank drive thrus, under gas pump awnings, or my favorite, under the freeway overpass. You can fit a surprising amount of cars under a freeway. We opted to go home to put our car in the garage so as not to risk another "Golf Ball" episode. While we waited for the storm to roll in, we were standing on the front porch. Drew was running around the sidewalk and Avery was crawling around on the porch. I went back inside and when I flipped the light switch, nothing happened. I looked around and noticed the clocks were off and the house was dark. We had lost power. About this time, the rain starts to really come down followed by the wind and hail. We hurried everyone inside and watched the storm from inside our dark house. Although it was a pretty good storm, the hail didn't get any bigger than pea or nickel size and we never heard the tornado sirens. After the storm passed, it was now time to wait for the power to come back on. We only had about an hour of daylight left so I started to gather our flashlights and candles in case the power outage was more than an hour. This is what I came up with.
3 scented candles from Bath and Body Works and one Mag light flashlight. It was clear our emergency preparedness skills were lacking.
While we were at his ceremony, it reminded me of being at Brent's Pharmacy school graduation from Texas Tech a couple of years ago (2006). I cried when they called his name because I was (and still am!) so proud of him. I knew how hard he had worked for so many years to get to that point. It was finally time to move out into the real world with no more Spring Break or summer vacation. We had to move from carefree college students to responsible adults with a "real" job. 
I know I can always go back but right now I am enjoying my role as a domestic engineer. If only I remembered more of my psych classes so I could use those techniques on Brent and the kids. Maybe I still have some old books laying around.... 
