Storm of the Century and Videos of Lana

Wednesday afternoon my husband called to tell me that a small box had arrived from our agency, containing many pictures of Lana and two videotapes.

I hurried home because I was excited to see the photos and the video, leaving work early at 4:15.

Thank goodness I did, because around 5:00, just after I got home, the Storm of the Century began. It pounded our house for four hours, with booming thunder and lightening strikes. Something tripped our security alarm, the panel of the alarm flashing "FIRE FIRE FIRE". ADT tried to call us to determine if our house was on fire, but, since the alarm overpowers the phone line, each time they would call, the alarm would trip again, flashing "FIRE FIRE FIRE".

I ran around the house smelling for smoke, and worried that our roof was on fire, but, there was so much wind and rain that I couldn't go outside to check. In the midst of this insanity, with the alarm continuing to siren because everytime I tried to shut it off it went off again, a tornado warning was issued for our area, so, we ran to the basement, trying, unsuccessfully, to corral the cats and take them to the basement with us.

THEN, the fire department showed up, because ADT had called them to tell them they thought our house was on fire.

We ran upstairs to talk to the fire fighters, and let them come into the house and look into our attic. They told us they didn't see any sign of a fire, and assured us that our roof was also not on fire. Very very nice, wonderful firemen. HOW EMBARRASSING.

Back down to the basement because the tornado warning was still on. We sat in the basement for a long while, then we were starving. We went back upstairs, the TV was still flashing "Tornado Warning" for our area. We quickly heated up some leftovers and went back to the basement. We grabbed the videos and pictures of Lana.

I wonder if someday I will tell my daughter about the night the fire department came to our house, and our family sat huddled in our basement, eating leftover Mexican food and looking at photos of a little girl on the other side of the world?

We put the videos into our TV/VCR that is set up in front of our treadmill, and watched Lana, at age 16 months and 19 months, playing with her foster mother. It was precious, and a good diversion from the massive storm happening outside.

Eventually, the tornado warning was called off, and we went back upstairs. Our pool was within about 1 inch of overflowing - I am just grateful that it was low when the storm started - ironically, Husband had commented the day before that we needed to add about two inches of water. Thank God he did not get around to doing that, or we would have had a terrible mess in our yard, I think.

In the end, we were very lucky. Our house sits up high, and the neighbors two doors down on either side have their backyards completely underwater and are pumping water out of their basements. There is talk of declaring our county a disaster area, and we are counting our blessings that we weathered the storm okay.

LM