Tornado scare

Last Thursday we had a bit of a tornado scare at the daycare.  It was getting very dark and raining pretty hard and I had been watching the radar and listening to our weather radio (which never even went off).  So I was making my rounds to all of the rooms and just told the teachers the plan if something were to happen so they knew where to go and what they needed to do.  We handed out lunch at 11:15 and I had just finished talking to the last class when someone said that a tornado had touched down about 20 minutes from here.  I immediately felt scared but knew that I couldn't show it because if I lost it, everyone else would lose it.  So I told the teachers let's just move to our "safe rooms" (thankfully we have two rooms in our building away from any outside walls and from any windows) just in case.  Then a teacher got a text from her daughter who is in high school that said they have all the kids in all the schools in the hallways and they've locked the doors and aren't letting anyone in or out.  I just got this chill all throughout my body and all of a sudden it was like, ok this is for real.  So I then was telling teachers to move a little quicker but not to even say the word tornado or storm because we don't need the kids even knowing why they are moving rooms.  I told them just grab some books, sing some songs and don't act scared because they can read it all over your face and the last thing we need was crying kids and teachers.  So I was running around, all the while fighting back tears because I WAS scared, making sure we had water, flashlights, diapers etc. because at this point I had no clue what was about to happen or how long we could be in these rooms if something were to come our way.  And then of course our phone starting ringing off the hook!  Parents were calling left and right asking about us if we were taking cover and what our plan was.  Well I finally decided that I can't be running to keep grabbing the phone so I sent a mass email out to all the parents just letting them know we were in safe rooms, gave them my cell phone number and I would let them know when we were all back in our normal rooms.  About 45 minutes later I called the sheriff's department and asked if it was safe for us to come out and she actually told us to stay put a little longer!  When we finally got back in our rooms it had been a little over an hour, but thankfully the teachers were great and held it together and so what if we were a little late on nap time :)  But things like that really get you thinking about how important it is to have safety strategies in place.  It's comforting to know that if something terrible were to happen and I wasn't there that they could handle it, and handle it well! 

This is a huge china berry tree in our front yard that barely weathered the storm.  I'm actually surprised that this was the only tree at our house that limbs got broken on.  There is an oak tree that is right outside of Korbyn's room, and if a strong north wind comes in it would land directly over her room.  And it isn't that big around, but it's just so tall and it looks like you could easily knock it over, I wish we could just cut it down!