The night the lights went out

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.

To pass the time we sat in the entry way and read books with the sunlight, Drew watched a movie on the Zune that just happened to be charged up and Avery crawled around on the porch.

We were losing daylight fast and by the time the sun had gone down, the power was still out.

We decided to head over to my parent's house as they had not lost power. We stopped at Sonic on the way to get a drink and what should have taken 5 minutes took 30 since everyone and their dog had the same idea. Since it took so long, instead of going on to my parent's, we headed back home to see if the lights had come back on. Nope. OK, back to my parent's where the air conditioning flowed freely and entertainment was in abundance. On the way, I asked Brent to stop at Wal-Mart so I could stock up on some candles since our supply was so pitiful. Plus, I was not going to waste my expensive candles to aid in our survival. While I was in the store, the kids fell asleep so instead of going on to my parent's house, we went home to put them in bed and wait out the power outage. It was about 10:00 so Brent went to bed but I wasn't tired so I stayed up to read. It just so happens that I am reading the book "Twilight." For those of you that don't know it is a book about vampires. This is normally not my type of book but it is a very popular one so I have finally been convinced to read it. And what better way to read a suspenseful book of the undead than by candlelight in an eerily quiet house. It was interesting....and a little heartpounding at times.

While I was reading, the power finally came back on and everything in the house kicked on and began humming and after more than 3 1/2 hours with no power, life was back to normal. When Drew woke up this morning, he was so happy to discover that we had "found" the power again.