Severe Weather Driving

Yesterday afternoon all 3 kids and I had an appointment with the Optomotrist. When we left there we headed out to do a few errands. My car isn't working great, so Ashley drove us in her car. The clouds looked ominous, but they were to the south, so we figured we'd be ok since most storms move south. Yea, well....not this one. It moved north and east. Right into our path. The closer the clouds got, the more ominous they looked and I kept searching the skies to make sure there were no funnel clouds, and thankfully I didn't see any. The rain started and came down so hard that it was hard to see while driving. It was so bad that many drivers had to pull over to the side of the road. Ashley however thought she was some kind of Mario Andretti and could drive through the storm, so big bad mama had to override her and I calmy asked her to pull over. Ok, thruth is, I screamed like I was on a rollercoaster "OMG PULL OVER NOW!" as I clutched the door handle in a death grip. The kids found that quite humorous.

So we sat there on the side of the road. I wished we could be under an underpass, but they were already full of other drivers. I Knew I needed to relax and calm down and the best way to do that is to get your mind off what is freaking you out and on to something else. Yea, I'm here to tell you that doesn't work. All I kept thinking is "We're gonna die!".

All of a sudden, from out of me came quotes from the 1996 Movie "Twister". I don't know what made me start to say them, but I have to assume it was Gods way of helping me through this. If you've never seen this movie, you really should. It's very realistic and I have seen it probably 50 times. As they chase the tornadoes they keep each other up to date on information by radioing back and forth, so when it started to hail I shouted "Hail. We have hail". Austin caught on right away and when some leaves flew by he shouted "Debris. We got debris." I then chimed in with "Cow!.....'Nother Cow." And Ashley responded with "No, actually, I think that's the same one." And finally Chelsea chimed in with "I gotta go Julia. We've got cows". All of those are lines from the movie and before we knew it we were reciting other lines from the movie and laughing so hard that none of us had even realized the storm had let up. Once we did, we noticed that almost all the other stopped cars were already gone and we giggled; embarassed that we were still sitting there. Chelsea said "Geeks. I have a car full of geeks" which sent us into one last fit of laughter as Ashley pulled back on to the road.

We then turned on the radio and heard them announcing that there was a severe thunderstorm warning for our county and Chelsea said "gee, tell us something we don't know." I said "how about that we have a car full of gorgeous people?" to which Austin answered with "Duh mom, everyone already knows that."

Yep, we are storm chasers...and humble ones at that!