What a difference a day makes

What was considered quarter-size hail from our front yard which fell during the storms.

Living in the midwest, we accept the threat of severe weather as a matter of geographic location.  We've been fortunate in our 2 1/2 years that we've never experienced a real tornado threat - until now.

Today that all changed.

We had returned from church and groceries when Bill announced he was making a trip to Best Buy and Ellie decided to go with him.  That worked for me as I was planning to get to work on putting a pork tenderloin in the crock pot and getting the sweet potatoes ready to roast.

And then the rain and wind began.

Bill quickly changed his mind, closed the garage door and said, "I think we'll wait out the storm here."

Boy, am I glad they did.

We grabbed our phones and Ellie's iPad and headed to the basement.  The wind howled, the rain came down sideways and the hail was pinging the windows.  My storm alert kept chirping on my phone to make me aware of the impended threat.

It hadn't changed from a warning to a watch before.  Until today.

The power went out.  Cell phones ceased to work,  unable to find a tower with strength.

And about 20 minutes later we came upstairs to survey the damages.  Chairs and tables had been blown around lawns, the basketball hoop was down across the street, and part of our backyard fence blew over.  But other than that, we were in tact.

And very grateful.

As soon as we saw pictures of our neighbors just a few towns over in Pekin and Washington, IL we said quiet prayers for them - for their safety and their recovery.

We're together as a family, the power is restored, the pork went into the oven instead of the crockpot.  Life resumed as normal.  But tonight's dinner blessing will go out to those who didn't endure the storm as well as we did here.