Sunday's Storm

So I've told a couple of you about this.... but here are the pictures. Dinner Sunday -as is typical - is at Nathan and Elaine's after church. We sent the kids out to play in the yard before it started raining. Since they saw the clouds building..... they decided to make a fort - to protect them from the rain. They lashed the tarp to the play structure pretty well. As it started to rain - we figured we should bring them in. That's when we saw this. Since it was barely spitting - we figured we'd let them play outside a bit longer. However, not long after - severe high winds kicked up and Rachael and I went out to bring them all in. She got hit in the face with a small branch - and I got hit in the back of the head with a larger one. The wind was blowing so hard - that the little kids we getting blown over. We managed to get them all in the house..... and then Rachael and I went back to untie the tarp. No more than 2 minutes after we came back in........ the tree snapped and broke - falling on the play structure. I've never seen a storm come up that fast in my entire life. It was quite an experience. We had to hook up the generator - the power was out there for the rest of the night. It was a good learning experience, for us and the kids. And now there is a good amount of firewood - set out to dry for next season.

For perspective - the tree lays across the entire width of the yard- it was between 40-50 ft tall.

there are 7 kids in there

trying to get it tied down

Nathan - jumping down to see what's going on -

















here is where is actually snapped off - you can see it at the base. if you look carefully - using the swing set in the back ground as an arrow - you can see the little play cube under the tree
the swing set is also over sized. the first horizontal bar that you see on the bottom is 4 ft off the ground. The swings in the forefront are on a large rotating clothes line