The above picture was taken minutes after the tornado hit, as you can see our house is gone. The garage and house were in front of the vehicles. My car was parked to the left of our truck before the tornado and see where it is after. This picture was taken by our neighbor from their driveway, this is what they saw after coming up from safety. 
This picture is chunks of our house scattered along the lake shore and in the lake. 
This is an ariel shot of where the tornado hit. If you look closely, our "house" is outlined in red; the hole in the ground. Levi's parents' house is the log house in the top right corner with the semi in the driveway.I know some people probably get sick of hearing about the tornado that hit us, it will be 5 years this summer. I just feel that I can't stress it enough how dangerous a tornado can be and how people should take severe weather seriously. Some may think that I am a paranoid freak about the weather, but my thought is...until you have been through what I have been through, don't judge. I know I have said, one minute sooner, one step over...we would not have survived! We were in the heart of that tornado, which had a damage path of 33 miles. It was rated an F3 in our area. This tornado picked up our house and basically threw it in the lake...we had nothing left but a hole the ground. There are many things that are still pretty vivid from that evening, many things I will never forget. I'm not sure why this tornado hit us and I will never know the answer to that. But I definitely do know that angels were watching over us and guiding us through that evening. Even though we are here today and survived, there are still many things about that evening that are painful. With one of them being the loss of our dog...she did not make it. She was in the basement with us, but things happened so quickly and we were trying to get ourselves and the boys under the stairs and didn't get her right with us. Right at first, we weren't sure what had happened to her. It wasn't until she was found on the lake shore that we knew she didn't make it. As I sit here and write this blog, I get all antsy....I just start thinking about everything of that day and what that tornado did to our life. I'm still bitter about it. I get mad about and think that "it's just not fair". I know that God gives us what we can handle, but that was quite the test. I try to analyze the why, but then just get all frustrated that I just make myself stop thinking about it. It was the day that flip our life upside down with seconds. Up until we got hit by that tornado, I never took severe weather seriously. I had the attitude that it would hit us...boy was I wrong that evening. I look back to minutes up to the tornado hitting. I was just coming back from maternity leave with daycare, so I had one daycare family that day (thank god, they left just before the tornado hit). Gavin was 17 months old and on that day, he played with play-doh for the first time. I had even gotten pictures of him playing with it and had already sent them through email, so I still have those pictures (thanks to the internet). Jace was just 5 weeks old. My daycare kids had just left. I was sitting at my computer getting mad at it, telling Levi that I wished I had a new computer. Levi was making supper. After supper, Levi was bringing his dishes to the kitchen and just happened to look out the window (so thankful that he did). He told me that there was tornado. I got up and looked out the window and sure enough...there was a tornado. You could tell that it was a distance away, but it was heading this way. Dummy me...I flip on the tv to see if we are under a warning...uh duh!! There's a tornado heading towards our house...definitely under a warning. I remember scrambling around the house looking for the diaper bad to bring to the basement (never did find the diaper bag). I put Jace in the infant car seat (just set him in, didn't strap him in), got the boys and our dog to the basement. I was kinda freaking out and trying to keep a 17 month old out of things in the basement. Meanwhile, Levi is outside video taping the tornado. I remember yelling at him to get down to the basement to help me with the kids. He comes down and opens up the one little basement window to look out and it started to get windy. He closes it up and says that we should get under the stairs. Well since we were remodeling the house, we had a lot of stuff in our basement and so much stuff under our stairs. So we are trying to hurry and get things cleared out from under the stairs when all of a sudden we felt pressure in our ears. I remember at that point, we looked at each other and then quickly tried to scrunch under the stairs. And boom! The tornado hit and that seemed like the longest few minutes in my life. I was holding Gavin and hunched over him trying to use my body to protect him. I remember him fighting me, screaming and crying. I remember screaming myself and crying....and feeling the suction...just trying to push myself down on top of Gavin. Levi was on the outside of all of us. Jace was just sitting in the carseat and got sucked up a little and Levi was able to catch him. And I remember Levi was trying to hovering over all of us. I still remember looking at him when I screaming and crying. It was the scariest moment of my life. One minute we are in our basement, somewhat under stairs and the next minute we were basically outside and the stairs were gone. Right after the tornado it, it started to rain. I remember when I finally looked up to see if it was done, we were covered in mud splats. I was so scared. When the tornado hit, we got pinned in by some homemade shelving that Levi had made out of old interior doors. That shelving unit was on the opposite side of the stairs from us. When the stairs went, that shelving unit fall over and pinned us in, which probably saved our lives. I remember being unsure if the tornado was done and questioning if it circles back. Unsure of what we should do...we were pinned in. Then we heard a gas leak...we had to get out. I remember Levi having to push down on my leg to get himself out. He climbed out of the basement (remember there were no stairs anymore) with Jace in his arms. He was going to set Jace in his truck, but it the inside was covered in glass. He came back to the hole and told me that I had to get out and he couldn't help me. I grabbed Gavin and I guess the adrenaline kicked in. I climbed on this wobbly shelf thing that was up against a wall and stretched my leg as far as I could to climb out of our basement. I remember it being so wobbly and thinking to myself that I could not fall and drop Gavin and that I had to get us out of there. I made it out of there! Once I was out of the basement with Gavin, I remember Levi hugging us so tightly and telling us that he loved us. Next thing...we had to get to some shelter. We looked around and there was a lot of damage...we ran to house a few doors down because that was the closest one that was as damaged. We ran over broken down "live" electrical wire, huge branches and debris...oh and I was barefoot, I had no shoes on. We knocked on our neighbors door and was so thankful that they were there to let us in. To be continued.....
