Tornado After Math!

Well we had quite an exciting Thursday evening!!! The weather guys had been predicting bad weather for a few days and they were right!!! Mom had picked the girls up from daycare, and Josh was with Dad looking at bathroom stuff for larry's. So when I got done with work I went to pick Libs up for swimming lessons(so I thought!) Josh and Dad got back and the weather was just kind of starting to storm, so we decided to stay put because they put out a tornado warning until 6:45pm. Well the rednecks that we are we decided to sit out on the front porch and check things out! Casey had called(he was in Alden) and said that Tornados had touched down, so we sent mom down with the kids and stayed outside to watch what was to come! First came the hail golf ball size some pea sized and some baseball and tennisball, I did manage to run out and pick some up we saved them in the freezer and the kids got to eat some too, they thought that was pretty cool!! The wind picked up so we went inside we looked out the south windows of mom and dads and seen the tornado forming but the trees were in the way so we couldnt see all that we wanted to the tornado was about 4 miles maybe away and looked like it was heading the other direction so dad josh and I went outside once again! It was still hailing at this point and we made it to the edge of mom and dads property we seen the tornado taking more form the thing was huge from bakkens house to peterson bros house! Thats when we noticed that it was looking like it was coming our way so we took off running and hit the basement! We waited a couple minutes and watched from the windows in the basement, once again it looked like it was heading the other direction, soo we decided to go outside for a better look! We got to the edge of the garage looked up above us and seen the clouds swirling above us, tree branches were flying and you could hear the trees snapping, we once again took off running for the basement, but this time it was for real! We watched from the basement window again and it felt like we were in the wizard of oz, debris was flying everywhere!! In a few minutes it was all over and we went out to see the damage we were unprepared for!! Trees upon trees were down and the power was out casey's house lost all the shingles on the west side! We were glad everyone was ok, but what a mess!! We were very fortunate in this whole mess peterson bros lost all their sheds but the house and garage and davis's old place is completely gone Ausens and Schlosser's lost everything but the houses!(the houses are standing but in tough shape!~) These places are as close as a 1/4mile to our parents house and an avg of 2 maybe 3 miles away! The whole thing seems sureal to see places that should be there and there gone!! So the last couple of days we have been doing clean up were all worn out sun burnt and tired!! But heres a few pic's of the whole event!