What the Hail!?

The beginning of the week (March 26-30) was quite…uneventful at work. I kept trying to find stuff to stay busy. I was thrilled when a certificate would come in, heh. I was giddy with suppressed laughter at the following pins:

Source: shibleysmiles.com via Yajaira on Pinterest

Source: static.someecards.com via Yajaira on Pinterest

Source: google.com via Yajaira on Pinterest

On Monday, the 26th, I’d made baked fish and green beans and it was SO GOOD. Since Mom got a scolding at the doc’s and since the rest of us really need to make an effort to eat well again, I wanted to start making healthy meals. Mom’s done good, though, and sometimes doesn’t even wait for me to make dinner like she used to; she’ll just make herself something healthy and she’ll retire to her room.

Jorge vacuumed my van that night, without being asked, heh ♥. He’s awesome. I put the girls in the bath and had them bathed before 9, woo! We asked Mom to keep an eye on them while we went to get a Redbox movie. We finally watched Contaigon; it was an awesome movie! Now Jorge knows why I wash/germ-x my hands all the time; you never know!!

The boys were all STAAR testing the next day; I’m confident they aced it and scored well in the writing part :).

We went to have dinner with the girls at Chili’s on the 28th; I had a coupon, which was a plus, heh.

I’m glad I took this photo of them before we left the house; those pine trees don’t look like that anymore (you’ll read why later). They look grumpy in the pic because this was about the 5th one because they kept moving and getting blurry. By this pic they yelled, “Let’s just go eat already!” LOL

They had a great time :). I tried eating “healthy” but you really can’t eat healthy when you go to Chili’s LOL. I had a shitton of chips and salsa and ordered the Cajun chicken Alfredo =\. I had a lot leftover tho, hehe.

The next day was the All About Women event. Michelle and I spent the afternoon running errands for Gerry. We got back to the office, helped set up here and there and then I excused myself to pick up my boys ♥. I picked them up and we went back to the office. We got there just in time for dinner; Costa Messa was catering :).

We finished up and got home. Mom had already made dinner for herself and the girls and Jorge ate lightly when he got home. Freddy came to visit and we all sat in the garage chatting. We started noticing the sky was quickly becoming dark and it got windy. I’d seen a FB update from the news that they expected thunderstorms here and there and possible hail. I figured it was one of those types of “storms” where it drizzles and goes away.

We had just set up Monopoly and Puss and Boots to watch with the kids when it started thundering. From one second to the next, it was hailing!! All the kids huddled in the living room with Mom while Jorge and I tried to clear the garage as quickly as possible to get my van and his work truck in. Only the front of his work truck fit since the lawn mower was in there; but at least the windows would be ok.

When the rain and wind had just started, the van was moving back with every gust of wind! Winds were about 75MPH that night. I’d never heard anything like this. It was the loudest, quickest storm I’ve ever experienced in my life! I can only describe the sound as a machine gun in an action movie; it was scary.

As Jorge was moving his work truck he got clocked in the head with a huge hail ball! I’m so glad he was swift and quick-thinking and moved the vehicles when he did. We were worried about his truck, which he’d left at work.

We took pics as much as we could, calmed the kids as much as we could. Eenan–who has feared storms since he was a toddler–wasn’t very happy, but he prayed and tried keeping as calm as possible.

We called everyone and told them to stay home/go home/put your cars away! And at some point we came inside and Jorge checked on the bedroom. Our window was completely broken and there was about an inch of water on the floor and glass everywhere; it even hit the other side of the wall!

We started cleaning up as quickly as possible and put a fan on to dry the room and cardboard to keep the water out. It was the best we could do with what we had at the moment. I’m so glad nobody was in that bedroom when the window literally exploded.

The girls’ room window broke, too, but only the outer panel, so their stuff didn’t get wet, thank God. I’m glad none of the other windows broke; I seriously thought the octagon-shaped window in our master bath didn’t break.

It looked like it had snowed outside, but it was about 6 inches of ice balls. It was the craziest sight I’d ever seen in March.

There were tornado watches and flooding all over the place. We heard the BMW dealership had tons of cars wrecked by the hail. We turned the news off and the kids finally calmed down and went to sleep around 11pm. Eenan stayed up later because he was nervous. Jorge and I went for a drive to check things out and we realized we were practically on an island; some places, like Shary Rd. had up to 2 feet of flooding. Damage to schools and the roads was bad enough to close them down. I ended up staying home and cleaning up; it looked like a disaster area outside. The trees were all bald; our flower bed was completely destroyed, my bougainvillea was bald :(. It was really sad.

Those who showed up to work were sent home in 2 hours due to lack of power. I hadn’t gone out to drive around, but Jorge called that 10th and Nolana was wrecked. His truck, by some miracle, had 0 damage!

Jorge and I were on our way to Walmart on Sunday to buy a push-broom and another rake. We took a detour instead to 10th and Nolana. The damage was crazy. Some places looked abandoned. We stopped by Starbucks and were taken aback at the sight:

We got home and started cleaning up outside. The boys had been playing games all day so we sent them all outside to help us. We had an ice cream break when the ice cream truck passed by and we cleaned some more. We made a game out of it and took turns holding bags open, raking and shoveling. We finished up in an hour and a half. We filled up about 25 bags! I thought we’d never get it done!

I’m glad there weren’t any casualties that night. I’m glad everyone was safe. It was a wake-up call though; heaven forbid we have a hurricane that hits us directly. I’d hate to know the type of damage that would happen then!