big ol' texas storm

Our little area got hit pretty hard by the storm on Wednesday night. Hank woke me up with a little puppy panic attack as the thunder started, and I got up to give him his puppy xanax. I peeked out the back window, and the rain was so hard that I couldn't even see our fence. Before I was back asleep, the power was off. Thankfully, our house didn't suffer any damage, and our neighborhood was relatively intact--minus a few fences here and there. However, driving through town yesterday afternoon was shocking. I drove through our old neighborhood and many of the large old trees were split in two, lying on houses or in the street. Driving down pipeline I saw even more damage. More trees, buildings missing windows and roofs, stoplight poles that were just naked poles now. In one shopping center, the giant sign in the center of the parking lot was completely bent over lying on the ground. This sign was probably as wide as four cars and as long as two. It took me a minute to figure out what it was. We were without electricity much of the day. Around 3:30 I heard on the radio that it may take until Saturday to restore all the power, so I decided to pack up and go out to Mom's house. I packed up all the fridge/freezer things and packed up all of Luke's things. I decided to put Luke down for a nap while I packed up my things and as I came out of the nursery I noticed that the power was back on! Hooray! So then I had to unpack everything. I tried to find some pictures of damage around town to post but I had trouble. I did find these pictures. This is what is left of our community baseball/soccer fields. This is maybe about a mile from our house, and right next to our old neighborhood.