Whirlwind

Wow...I have a few things to say that I am just gonna put all in one post for time's sake. I started my first set of classes on April 25th and let me tell you...it is amazing the amount of work that is piled on you right away. I felt overwhelmed the entire week and just wanted to run away from it all. I stayed in constant prayer with the Lord about it and I just kept hearing in my head, "I am not a quitter." This is what kept me from literally quitting. On top of my feeling overwhelmed, we had a natural disaster in my community. On Wednesday, April 27th we had a series of horrible storms pass through that ended up destroying Alabama, Ringgold, Ga, and Bradley County. Hamilton county was affected as well, but no where near as bad. There are many other cities and towns I have not mentioned here as it is just too many. My mom didn't want to take Maddy to daycare that morning until after the storms passed. I was really worried it would be too late by the time they got there so I kept pushing her to go. I took one last look at the radar and they said it would be in our town by 8:30 a.m. I believe and I knew that my mom and Maddy would not have time to get to safety. I ended up telling my mom just to stay home and I would just keep Maddy home that day. Before I move on, the last tornado we had here, my mom got caught in it while driving and she did not want to relive that experience. Once the bad part of the storm got to my house and the power started flickering just like in the movies right before a tornado, me, my mom, and Maddy piled in my mom's closet and camped out in there. The power did go out and we were like uh-oh here we go...there was a time or two I just knew a tornado was headed our way from the noise I heard inside the closet. Nothing ever happened so once it got quiet I decided to go take a look out the window. It wasn't exactly calm, but it was not as severe as it had gotten. We were later told by a TDOT worker that lives in my neighborhood that a tornado touched down approximately 9 miles from my house. I will admit that I get pretty excited when "interesting" weather hits just because we do not see anything real horrible in Chattanooga, and I am really thankful we don't. I have always wanted to see a tornado in person, but not where it hurts anybody..I just wanted to see it in the sky or in a huge open field. I had no idea that on Wednesday I was going to get my wish. We lost power for approximately 4 hours and got in the car to assess the damage. We were supposed to be getting another round later that day and it was going to be worse than the first. The second wave was not worse at my house, but we did see some heavy winds and some hail. Later that evening my mom ran in to get me and told me to come look outside. I knew what i was going to be seeing..sure enough...in the sky was a tornado that had formed. That tornado ended up hitting bradley county and was an EF-0. My heart goes out to everybody who was affected by this storm and I will be praying for everybody. I have never in all my life seen anything like what I have seen and never in all my life thought Chattanooga would have weather like we did that Wednesday. I will post some pics of the damage we got up here in Birchwood and East Brainerd. My mom took these pics:

Ok, the animal is not part of the damage, but isn't it so cute?! This is right down the road from me and they have all kinds of animals. Anyways, with all the damage from the storm we were left with no internet. I work from home and I was so stressed I was going to be in trouble with work. My work doesn't seem to care if a tornado came ripping through my house...they'd still expect me to stay heads down and focused and working. I did find out Friday morning that I was not in trouble with work thank goodness. The only problem I ran into was not having acess to school since my classes are all online. My mom has a network card from her cell phone carrier that acts as a connection to the internet for computers. It is good sometimes and really slow other times. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday were all slow days and I ended up turning in a paper late and it caused me to miss my participation requirements which ultimately affect my final grade. Let me remind you that if I fail any class, I will have to pay $1,045 out of my pocket for each class I fail...that is a lot of money that I do not have so I HAVE to pass my classes. I was able to just let it go Sunday and I did have some quiet time with the Lord. I woke up this morning to still having no internet. My boss told me that I would need to work in the office or use PTO and I chose to work in the office because I have a vacation planned this year. I did take today off so I could get a jump start on school and low and behold we now have internet. The Lord has answered so many of prayers and I just feel so undeserving. My prayers are usually meanial and small compared to what other people are going through right now such as a loss of home or loved ones. I started to post this on facebook about my having internet and how God answered my prayers, but I didn't want anybody to get the wrong impression that my being without internet lately is so much worse than what people in ringgold and alabama and other places are going through. Please understand that I feel very fortunate to only have had our internet affected by this storm. I feel humbled after seeing all the devastation and I also feel very blessed.
The last bit of news on this post is Maddy has officially graduated to a big girl bed. It broke my heart to have to break down her crib...that was her last baby item I had left. She is no longer a baby in any way and I really miss my little baby, but I am very proud of who Maddy has become now. It was the strangest thing...she woke up late Saturday morning (I for one was glad because I didn't get to bed till 3 a.m. due to school) and I went in to get her. I realized I forgot her wipes in the living room so I told her I would be right back like I have done before. As long as I leave her door open she has always waited for me to come back. On Saturday she decided to do something different...she climbed outta her crib. It scared me so bad so I knew it was past time for her toddler bed to appear lol. I got her toddler bed put together, which is just her crib broken down and a guard rail installed and it was so super easy to put together. Once she saw it she immediately climbed in and laid her head down. She just smiled and laughed and it's like she just couldn't believe her eyes. That made me smile so big. I took some pictures with my mom's camera and then also video'd it. Here are the pics:

Her first night sleeping in it we kept our same bedtime routine and not once did she climb out of bed. I was very surprised. The biggest problem I have is waking her up now...which I can handle that but at the same time she looks so cute sticking her lil hiney up in the air sound asleep and I hate to wake her...I just want to let her sleep. She did another great job tonight...not once has she gotten out...thank you Lord. She does love her bed and I am so happy she does :) I have other things to talk about but want to take a little more time than I have right now.

This is a video of the storm I got on camera. The time was around 7:21 p.m. A confirmed tornado touched down in Bradley County, which is the left side of video from where I am, at 7:35 p.m. We actually saw the tornado in the sky which is not what I envisioned a tornado looking like, but this tornado was EF-0 I do believe.