Last Week...

Picture recap of last week...

(Bear with me, I'm a rambler)

Sunday evening we had dinner with Will's parents. After dinner we went outside where Liam fell in love with their rope swing. He thinks he's such a big boy holding onto that rope!

Monday was Liam's one year appt. (He's snacking on some goldfish here while we waited for the doc) He checked out great and is healthy as a horse! He weighs 21 pounds, 15 oz. (60%) and is 30.5 inches long (75%). I knew he had gone through a growth spurt a few weeks ago, but my goodness! That's the highest percentile he's ever been!

(tornado photos are all from facebook friends.)

Tuesday. Unless you live under a rock, everyone knows what happened in Dallas on Tuesday. That morning Liam and I had gone to our library class and then headed to my parents house for the day. They live about 45 minutes west of us. I left the dogs outside because we were only anticipating a little rain and knew they would just go under the porch. The storm hit my parents house first in the early afternoon, but we only got heavy rain. Then it started heading east, straight for our town. I was glued to the television all afternoon watching the radar and listening to tornado after tornado hit closer and closer to our house. 12 tornadoes hit the DFW area in total. Our little town ended up only getting heavy rain and hail, and my in-laws went to our house and let our dogs in.

The scariest part of my day though was when I watched a tornado live hit the town of Forney, TX. You may have heard of it on the news, or specifically the neighborhood called Diamond Creek that was hit the worst. An F3 tornado hit 95 homes in that neighborhood and severely damaged or completely flattened a lot of them. There is also an elementary school in that neighborhood that you may have also heard of by now, Crosby Elementary. I never mentioned it on my blog before, but that's the school I used to teach at before becoming a stay at home mom. I taught there for two years and all my friends and coworkers are still there. Liam and I just went up there before Christmas break to see everyone and some of my former students. And I just watched it get hit by a tornado. To say I was in a panic would be an understatement. I started texting my coworkers asking if they were okay because it hit around 3:45pm, and I knew they weren't allowed to leave until 3:30pm. About 30 minutes later I finally starting hearing from a few of them - they were all still at the school when it hit with about 40 students who had either been waiting to be picked up by their parents or who had been on school buses that turned around and came back to the school when they saw the tornado coming. The tornado only damaged the front of the school so thankfully everyone was fine. All of my friends and former teammates that taught in the primary grades lost their cars though because we would all park in the front parking lot near our hall. They were all either flipped over, rolled, had busted out windows, or were slammed up against each other. I was also worried for all the families that live in the neighborhood because a lot of my former students live in Diamond Creek and would walk home after school. When you look at the pictures of the neighborhood it is terrifying, but by the grace of God no one was killed or even seriously injured. You can read more about it and see more pictures here, here, or here.

All my friends cars where we parked every morning :(

 Funny story though - right after the tornado hit everyone was rushed out of the school because of a gas leak, so none of my friends actually saw their cars at first. My friend April's husband came up to look at them and took some pictures. See the upside down car? That's my friend Evie's car. Well apparently her daughter's absolute favorite toy was in there so April's husband smashed out her back window (car was a total loss anyways, I mean it's upside down!) to rescue Pippa's toys! Isn't that sweet! 

I was really shaken up by the whole thing, but the whole reason Liam and I had gone to my parents house that day was so they could watch Liam while Will and I had a date night. I really wasn't in the mood anymore, but it had been planned for weeks and since I knew all my friends were okay, Will thought it would be a good distraction.

So off we went to see the broadway performance of Mary Poppins! We saw it at Bass Hall in Ft. Worth and it was fabulous. We went to dinner before and then stopped in this cute like cupcake shop where they had special Mary Poppins cupcakes in honor of the show. It was a really fun evening and I'm glad we went even though it had been a really stressful and sad day.

We didn't get home until after midnight, and Liam and I had to be at MOPS at 9am. Oh, and it was my groups turn to bring food! Needless to say, we just stopped off at the grocery store on our way there and bought snacks. Then we had to leave MOPS a little early to make it to the park for an Easter Egg hunt! I'm in another moms group called Harbor Moms and we had an egg hunt with some of our friends from that group.

Liam and Max with their cute matching Easter baskets Max's mom made them! 

Shaking away! 

I tried to get a picture of the two of us, but he was more interested in his eggs.

 After the Easter egg hunt we came home and crashed! Liam took a long nap, and we just relaxed the rest of the day. It had been a pretty busy 24 hours! Isn't this picture funny? Poor Liam can't even enjoy his snack without dogs noses in his face!

On Thursday we hung out at home and Liam got the take a bath in our big tub. I'd never given him a bath in our tub before and he was in heaven! He splashed around and played for at least a half hour! 

On Thursday night, Will, Liam, and I drove to Forney's Chick-fil-A for a fundraising event. We drove through the Diamond Creek neighborhood on the way so I could see my school. I was also trying to find some of my former students' homes and see if they looked okay. I have since heard a few were pretty badly hit. :( We couldn't get to the area where the houses were the worst because there were still news trucks and police, but I was able to see my school. I took these two pictures with my phone as we drove through.

Look at how the fence is completely flattened. 

It was so good to see some of my coworkers and my old boss at the fundraiser and hug them and talk to them! One of them told me that right before it hit, a daycare bus came barreling back to the school and the kids were all running in for safety. She was on duty and basically had to rush the kids into the library and was hovering over them in the corner when the tornado hit. Can you even imagine??! It gives me shivers every time I think about it. I also heard about a mom who had been in her car out front to pick up her daughter. Instead of taking her daughter, she decided last minute to run into the school and wait with her there until the storm was over. After the tornado hit she went back outside and her car was gone! It was found a couple hundred yards away in a field completely destroyed. You can watch her interview here. I loved how uplifted they were about the whole thing though. They were all going on and on about all the help they'd received in just those two days, and how excited they were to get back to school. The school was closed for the rest of the week, but thanks to volunteers (and of course the fire department and police) they were able to start back to school on Monday!

I'll save Friday for an Easter post because Will had the day off and we had a nice, long, relaxing Easter weekend! 

Phew, what a week!