Toadfrogs & Elephants

Wade and I woke up this morning in Destin to a huge thunderstorm. It was the scary, house shaking kind of thunder. It poured and rained and then poured some more. The storm let up a little about the time we were meeting my dad and Laura for breakfast. (They just happened to be in the same area this weekend – how random!) Then we packed up and headed back to Atlanta.

Most of the drive home was cloudy and it got stormy the closer we got to Atlanta. Then traffic seemed to stop. It only took us a minute to realize that it had begun to hail and cars just stopped under the bridge – blocking traffic. Since I have heard horror stories of the damage hail can do to cars (and this was big hail) we got off the interstate. Unfortunately, everyone else had the same idea. All of the covered gas stations were full with cars.

We just picked a random road leading away from the hail and drove. At one point I turned to look at the clouds and thought I saw a funnel cloud. I pointed it out to Wade and then we started to see things flying in the air – it really was a tornado! I was chicken so we drove away from it – Wade wanted to drive toward it. In the end, we pulled off the road and the tornado passed by, closer than we realized. Here are a couple pictures. Look closely – it is the narrow white cloud in the middle of all the dark clouds.

The tornado is in the middle of this picture, but behind the tree. If you look closely you’ll see the dark outline.

After the cloud had passed by, we continued down the road to the interstate. Traffic slowed at one point about 1/3 of a mile down the road. We realized the tornado had hit this house. There was debris in the roadway and the other side of the house had even more damage than the side in the picture – how scary.

If we hadn’t stopped, but kept driving we would have been right in it’s path!

I got a call last Tuesday from Kate, my best friend from high school. She called to tell me that she and Scott (the guy she has been dating for over a year) had decided to get married – this coming Sunday. Talk about a quick wedding – but that’s just like Kate!

The wedding was going to be in Destin, which is only about a 5.5 hour drive for us. Wade and I decided we definitely wanted to be there. I offered to help Kate in any way I could and she asked Wade to be the wedding photographer. Then she called back and said they’d decided to have a wedding party and would I be her matron-of-honor. Of course I said yes! She said to just wear whatever I had (this is when I realized Destin weather was really nice in Jaunary). I decided on the dress I wore in my sister’s wedding and had my mom overnight it to me. My dad’s company has a condo in Destin so we had the key overnighted to us for that too.

Kate and Scott’s wedding was outside in a small park gazebo that was all decorated with lights for Christmas. It was a small wedding, but all of their family was there. The reception was at their house, which has just undergone some major renovation. I couldn’t believe how great it looked! Their daughter, Taylor, was just adorable and a really good sport.

Finally, the long weekend is here! I can’t really complain, I didn’t go to work on Friday. Wade and I took the day off to look at houses. Daniel drove over from Huntsville and got in just in time for dinner. The three of us realized we hadn’t seen King Kong and decided to go to the 10 o’clock showing. That might not have been the smartest move – it is a three hour movie. We didn’t crawl into bed till about 2 am.

The movie was pretty good. I am curious now to see the original. I loved the dinosaur/gorilla fight scene. In what other movie would you see that? I was also impressed with the range of emotion that was displayed by a non-talking gorilla. However, the movie seemed to have an overabundance of long looks and huge, creepy, crawly bugs. Did I mention the island natives were a little freaky?

Wade and I are now officially house hunting. What fun! Now if we can just decide on which one we like…..

Most of the houses we are looking at are older houses that could use a little updating. The hardest part has been finding a house that has a shop (or a garage that can be used as a shop), but both of these houses have two car garages.

Do you ever just feel a little behind or a little different from everyone else?

As I was unpacking my bags, I discovered lots of forgotten presents. My favorite was the dark chocolate M&Ms that Jenny found for me. I posted about them a while ago – especially how hard they are to find. Thanks Jenny!!

Christmas Day finally arrived! We started the morning with madness at my mom’s house. She was doing the Christmas breakfast for our extended family. (We have oyster stew with the normal breakfast things – weird, huh?) I think about 18 people came. Wade and I snuck off as everyone was eating to join his family for breakfast. Then we went to church and then back to his grandparents’ house for presents. After presents, lunch, naps, and a couple of games of Uno – Santa and his elf even dropped by for a visit….