Tornado Season

Are you serious? There is a season every year for this? Yep, there sure is. And its been super mild this year so far, which I have to be grateful for. We had our first Tornado Warning this weekend. We've had a couple of tornado watches since we've been here, which just means that the conditions are right for one to form, but this was the first time there has actually been a warning, which means that one has actually been spotted within 30 miles and is headed our way.
It was crazy. So, of course my husband was out of town for the night leading worship at Bible study almost 2 hours away, so it was just me and the kids for the night. We invited a friend of ours from the college group over for the night to eat pizza and hot dogs and watch a movie with us. It was shaping up to be a pretty good night. Abigail's request for corn on the cob was boiling away on the stove top and I was about to heat up the turkey dogs and place them in their whole wheat buns (gee, I sure know how to take all the fun out of junk food for my kids, huh?)
Clarissa, our friend, has only been here for the last couple of semesters at the junior college , so she is just as freaked out by the whole possibility of a tornado as me. Honestly, that had not been on my mind at all. Ive gotten quite used to the crazy shake-your-house thunderstorms, and it wasnt even that bad at the moment. Just a bit of rain, it seemed like. Then she gets this text message from a friend that says: "a tornado is forming over pecan gap and is headed straight for paris."as we were giving each other this look of "where in the world is pecan gap?" we hear the thunder rumble in the distance. OKAY, so I go and check the weather on the internet (we dont get any tv stations) and it is pratcically blinking red warning lights at me that there is an official tornado warning. Uh, hold on while I pass out. No, wait, smile for the kiddos, yeah, thats it. Then, because the doors are all open, we hear unhindered the eerie sound of the tornado sirens. Yeah, I was like, are you kidding. Lord, couldnt you have waited at least until my husband was home? I was like, code red speed from there on out. I sent my friend to clean out our closet in the center of the house (thats where youre supposed to wait it out, or the bathroom with a matress on top of you) while I closed everything up and the kids were sent to get a blanket and we had a tornado adventure picnic in the closet. It passed within the hour and then we were left with just a severe thunderstorm, the kind that there is no way you could sleep through. Not even my husband, who has slept through earthquakes and gang gun fights just outside his house, could sleep through this one!! I made him get up once to check the computer and see if it was back into tornado warning stage again or just the tornado watch thingy. Finally we went to sleep in the early morning hours. Welcome to tornado season!