We had quite the 'little' storm last Friday night. We knew it was coming - with temperatures in the lower 90s all day it was setting the stage for some serious storms. I spend the day sweating in the heat at ValleyFair Amusement Park with our senior high youth group and we headed back a bit early because of the coming storm (and the fact that the heat seriously sapped our energy!)
Within about 20 minutes of arriving back home our power went out and was to stay out until about 1:00 the next afternoon. Then - the wind! Someone told us there was 70 MPH straight-line winds in our area. It was blowing through our back yard and at the house so hard that the rain began bubbling up through the bottom of our sliding glass patio doors. It looked pretty scary for a bit and we grabbed the pets and sat in my windowless basement office for a bit - just in case. When we came out, Jonah looked in the back yard and said, "Where's the trampoline?" Somehow our trampoline was lifted two stories over our house, taking out the (unused) TV antenna, whipping across and down the street where it slaughtered the neighbor's basketball hoop before smashing their SUV. Whoops. (Fortunately we have very understanding neighbors.) Here's what the mangled mess looked like when it was done:
Our other neighbor helped out by climbing on our roof the next day and removing the remains of the antenna and patching up the holes it left. We are so thankful for our wonderful neighbors! Other than the antenna, though, our house was undamaged by the flying trampoline. Unfortunately we can't afford to replace our trampoline right now so our boys are pretty bummed. But the good news is that nobody was hurt!