Wanted to update everyone and give one place for pictures.   Friday night around 9m we think we had a tornado take out the barn right next to the house.  Very scary.  No warnings at all, not even severe thunderstorm.  It just came out of nowhere. 

This is what I saw outside my back door.  When we ran downstairs to the basement, I could see large items flying through the air but didn't stop to see what it was.    It was parts of the barn! 

We are so thankful...   we were all upstairs and we easily could have lost a kid or all of us had this thing hit the house.  Scary. 

Here is the driveway next to the house....  crazy.  

Standing and looking in what was the barn.... 

This beam was thrown across the farm, landing in the roof of the milk barn, and extending 6 feet inside the barn!

Check out my car!  That is a beam under my car!   Rubble all around the car but nothing in the car!  All I have are smashed rear view windows, scratches, and dents!  

I was shocked to welcome our fist hero helper at 7:30 am!  He was a workhorse!  Cleared most of the upper driveway and worked on the huge piece of shed in the swingset in an hour or two!  Amazing!

Thanks Rebecca for loaning us your husband!

Rex was here early too!   

Always the knight in shining armor that one!  :-)  

All the kids got into the action!

So many people showed up to help!   We really were amazed...  all day long it seemed like people showed up and other left.. it was constant stream of help.   The phone rang and text messages of support came in all weekend.  We really are blessed with wonderful friends and customers! 

Before dinner....  yard, driveway, and pasture cleared!   How incredible is that!  When I looked at the mess in the morning.. I figured it would be weeks of work!  

Got a phone call Sunday afternoon from Jim... one of our customers and friends.  He took some video footage and said they wanted to air it on the 9:00 news... was that OK?  Sure... why not.  So we wait and watch Fox 42 9:00 news and about died laughing at the video footage aired - about 30 seconds of Alex running around the barn naked as  a jaybird playing with one of his friends.  Geez.. I thought he stayed dressed all day Saturday!   Oh well...   so goes life.. 

Yesterday, another phone call.  Fox 42 wants to send a reporter out.  Is this OK?  Sure... what's another naked butt on TV gonna hurt?  Right?  It's gonna happen...  best not to fight it.  I can have those darned boys dressed and ten seconds later they are streaking.   But wait...  they are all at Cynthia's house playing!  Woo Hoo!  We can do an interivew without naked people!  What a concept...   sure come on over!  

Turns out they want to come because apparently the weather service says the winds were only 25 miles an hour.  Naturally he waits to tell me this till I am on camera and captures my response.    Seriously, the reporter was a super nice guy. :-)  I would love to kick the editor though. :-)  Why is it that they take 30 minutes of footage and choose the most bizzare comments to air.  Like me pointing out our junk... that wasn't even part of the interview.. I didnt realize I was being taped.  How funny.   I watch the news last night and all I could think was how silly we looked.. and how I need to loose a bunch of weight.   We did say some great stuff that actually made sense... but that didn't get aired.  LOL  Oh.. and of course they re-aired the naked boy footage.  GREAT. 

Here is a link to the news segment.. if you need a good chuckle..  CLICK HERE

I will leave you with a couple interesting shots Andy took...  I think they are pretty cool. 

Our love to all... and again THANKS SO MUCH  to everyone who came out to help, called, emailed, left gifts, expressed concern and generally showed us LOVE.