A walk through the neighborhood

Today I spent the morning volunteering at our new church. We were trying to organize a Free childcare for the disaster relief efforts. We made up some flyers and hand delivered them to people in the Cornerstone neighborhood. WOW, what a sight. The news pictures, and even my pictures don't do it justice.
Everyone always hears how sporadic a tornado can be, ripping walls off of a dining room while leaving all the dishes on the table in tact, or destroying one house and 10 yards away not a shingle missing. That was a lot of what I saw today. There were some houses that were piles of lumber, others looked like they had little to no damage except windows and shingles missing, yet both had huge spray painted Red "X" with the letter "C" meaning condemned. I think if I drove up to my house and saw a pile, it wouldn't be nearly as heart breaking as driving up, seeing you house in the distance, thinking... "wow it looks like it faired pretty well compared to many, at least I can go get my stuff"... only to find the dreaded Red paint. Many of those houses acted like a pressure cooker, so structurally that are some of the most unstable houses.
The amazing part as we walked through the entire neighborhood, is we couldn't find one "victim" Everyone was very upbeat. You had trouble telling who lived there and who was the relief help.
Talking with our pastor, he said he has a whole list of supplies and people willing to be donated, and yet his Tornado Needs list has been empty from the first night. Including 30 hotel rooms and two empty condos, that he can't seem to fill. What an AMAZING blessing! Many people were evening saying how they are eating better with the free food then they would have ever had at home. The Salvation Army food truck is parked in the church parking lot and serving food from Restaurants at each meal. The first night they all had Outback Steakhouse.
In March our church prayed to see 1000 people at our Easter service in the parking lot. As Pastor Dave said, "we were all a little disappointed that we didn't' have that many, yet Thur night over 1100 people were fed in our church parking lot". And yesterday all the churches in town got together for a special worship service at the High School, which was packed at more then 1800!
God's timing is always Perfect!

Shelter in the Storm!

Wow, where do I begin. I've been in too many tornado warning in MO to even count, but I've never been close to the destruction or debris, until Thursday.

The day started out with me complaining and being very upset. I arrived at Madelyn's house with Maria and Andrew, ready to start a normal Thurs. Only to find that Madelyn's 3 older siblings, Lexi 6, Kyle 9, and Cali 11, were out of school and would unexpectedly be joining us. Thinking the extra $30 was not enough to cover the headache of caring for 6 children, and wondering how I would ever get Madelyn and Andrew down for naps that afternoon, I proceeded to get online during a dull moment and complain to my mom, John and other friends. Little did I know how exciting our day would become.

It was really windy all morning, nothing unusual for this time of year in northern CO. The kids were starting to eat lunch when the power went out. Once again, no big deal. It started to rain and hail a little bit. I proceeded to go to the front door and take pics of the hail until one popped me in the leg, which hurt and left quite a bruise. Before I even made it back into the kitchen there was golf-ball size hail falling. It was quite a sight. Lexi ran to the front door and had her face pressed against the door looking at the hail. I told her 3 times to back up in case it hit the window just right and broke it, however she either couldn't hear me or chose to ignore me. So I shouted at the top of my lungs "LEXI BAHNSEN BACK AWAY FROM THAT DOOR BEFORE IT BREAKS IN YOUR FACE" Not the best choice of words, but it got her attention. She began to freak out, crying hysterically. I tried to calm her down but the sound of the hail was very un-nerving, especially to her. So I suggested that we all go down in the basement where it wouldn't be as loud and the window were small enough that we wouldn't have to worry about them breaking.

After getting all 7 of us down stairs I ran back upstairs to get a bouncy seat for Madelyn, at which time I noticed the baseball-softball size hail and that it was an erry gray color outside preventing me from seeing even six feet out the back door. I quickly went back downstairs where Cali was complaining that her ears were popping. I noticed it too so I asked everyone to go into the laundry room where there were no windows at all. We stayed in there for about 5 mins or so singing songs to try to calm down Lexi. The sound of the hail was unbelievable. When it sounded like things had calmed down, I told the kids to stay downstairs while I went upstairs to get a bottle for Maria. Upon which I found glass all over the floor where hail had busted out a living room window, right above where the two babies had been sitting about 10 mins earlier. I went back down stairs and told them the storm was over but I needed them to stay down there until I couldn't figure out what was going on and try to pick up the glass. I put Cali in charge of feeding 7 month old Madelyn and keeping an eye on Andrew, Lexi and Kyle, while I took little Maria with me outside to scope things out. Several neighbors were looking around in amazement trying to figure out if it was a bad storm or really a tornado. One neighbor that I talked to said she saw the storm and it couldn't have been a tornado because it wasn't funneled. It was just a giant black wall cloud moving across. Little did she know it was a 3/4-1 mile wide tornado moving across land at 45-50 mph with winds around 150-165mph. I then started trying to reach any of the parents and John. Of course phone lines were being bombarded so it took forever, luckily a neighbor got a hold of Meagan and said she was headed home. By the time she and Travis got there most of us had looked across the field and saw piles of 2x4's; that's when it hit us, it really was a tornado.

Someone came down the street saying if you could help go to the daycare across the street, they've see legs under some of the debris. Luckily it was only a doll that had been spotted. All the teachers managed to get about 150 kids into the gym and bathrooms and proceeded to throw them selves on top of the children to protect them from the flying debris. After the storm they smelt gas so they took the kids over to the bank and put them in the vault. There where a few minor cuts and bruises but all the children were accounted for.

It took about 2 hours before I could reach John, once I did, I fell apart. I am terrified of storms, but God gave me the strength to hold it together for the children. Once they were all safe with their parents, all the stress came flooding out! My legs went out from under me and I melted to the floor for about 5 mins. The windshield of my car was busted in three places but was still drivable, so John came and took Andrew and I home. ( I was too shaky to drive) We quickly checked on a few friends and then proceeded to our house, about 5 mile away, to find not even a single blade of grass touched! Just no power for about 45 mins.

After calling back about 15 people that had called and left messages we tried to just have a "relaxing" evening at home. However it broke my heart when I put Andrew to bed and he woke up 3 times shaking and crying, saying he was scared the "big snowballs would break his windows".

The following day I thought everything is fine now. I've been able to process everything and life is back to normal... WRONG! I managed to sneak in a nap at about 1pm on Friday. I suddenly woke up, shaking, to massive winds outside, some of the gust were clocked at up to 75 and 90mph. John already had the news on and they said there was another tornado but it was 20 miles or so east of us, so I tried to calm down a little. Then they announced that funnel clouds had been spotted in Johnstown and Windsor. I freaked. I ran outside screaming for John, to find a sudden calm. Which of course freaked me out even more. He came inside and said our area is completely clear of any clouds, we're safe. That flood of emotion was unbelievable. Later that night I heard sirens and my heart started pounding and I started shaking again. Floods of sound memories came rushing back. Last night I woke up three time because the power went off. I would normally sleep through that but instead I was panicked. I'm sure in time I will not be so sensitive to all those simple sounds, but for now John will just have to put up with my mini freak outs!

Our church sits on the back side of the neighborhood that was destroyed. We had several broken windows and some roof damage, but they got it cleaned up and we held our 3 services as usual. In the 2nd service there were 2 families that lost their houses. But each family member was fine and they were just thankful to be standing there today praise the God that protected them.

I'm attaching some photos of both the house that I nanny in and some taken today and the neighborhood that was hit hardest. Oddly enough when we bought this house almost 4 years ago we had to decided between two houses, this one and one on Kenosha Ct in Windsor. One of the pics is of that other house. Most of the houses on Kenosha Ct are now uninhabitable. Again I praise God for those little things!

The window that broke leaving glass in the living room floor

Back yard damage. That is an approx 600lbs bbq grill that

took 3 adult men to set upright.

As you can see there used to be 6ft privacy fences between everyone's houses

Aprox. 2 blocks away from the house I was in.

The beginning of the hail. This is what hit my knee and left a nice bruise.

Like I said... this was just the beginning.

Random pictures of the houses and other buildings aprrox 3 blocks from where we were.

The house on Kenosha Ct, that we almost bought 4 years ago.

2 house down from the house we almost bought on Kenosha Ct.

The damage to my car! If you look closely you can see the hail dents on the top. It's hard to see in pics on a white car. A neighbor said my car looked like a golf ball. And we only have liability. Hopefully Meagan and Travis homeowners ins will cover it since I was on their property!

Life with twins and a singleton

Well, I offically know what it's like to have twins and a singleton! For the next 3 weeks I'm taking care of Maria (6 weeks) and Madelyn (5 months) plus Andrew. Yesterday we decided to venture out to the park. Boy am I glad a got a double stroller. However Andrew got jealouse that only "the dirls (girls)" got to ride in the new stroller. So I ended up puting Maria in the baby bejorn, and put Madelyn and Andrew in the stroller and proceeded to walk 1/2+ miles to the park. Beside for the stroller being hard to turn when Andrew is in the front, it was actaully kind of fun. And if was funny to see everyones faces as they watched me menuvor doen the sidewalk.

Andrew loves Maria. He even asked if we could take her home and I could be her moomy and he owuld be her daddy! It was so sweet. He's always asking for us to get a baby for his home. He says he wants a boy baby, but you should see how adorable he is with the girls. He helps pick out their clothes and tells them how pretty they are. He will make an excellent big brother some day.

Maria is so much easier the Madelyn. Madelyn is quite the little Diva. Maria is very laid back. She never fusses, will sleep anywhere and take her bottle at any temp. Plus her parents are so much easier to get along with! :o)

Well, speaking of the little diva... she is starting to wake up. I promise to get more pics posted within the next week!

Answered Prayer!

WOW! God is Awesome! So as you could tell I've been alittle frustrated with my current Nanny position. Monday night I got a call from Glen (the orig pople I was going to nanny for that was adopting). They got a baby!!!! Little Maria was 4 weeks old on Mon. He wanted to know if I could start with them on the 12th! :o) YEAH!!!!!!!! I told Madelyn's parents on Wed. They took it pretty well, but obviously they weren't happy! It looks like I'll watch both girls for the month of May and then a friend of a friend will take over in June. I'm not going to be responsible for 2 infants, a 3yr, 6yr, 8yr, and 11yr old in the summer. SOme poeple are cut out to parent 6 kids, but I'm not one of them!

So in the end, it looks like everything is working out for the best! Why do I ever doubt?