Aaron's Birthday

Aaron's birthday this year was once again eventful!

Jace picked out Aaron's cake design. Of course, he chose Texas.

Aaron blew out all the candles which was easy because we didn't have exactly 41 candles. We just put in as many candles as we could find.

Jace (with help from Melanie) made a sign for Aaron to run through. Jace believes that every birthday should included the birthday person running through a sign while everybody yells surprise! You may have already guessed what we did on his birthday that ended up setting precedence.

Michael and Melanie made it home that afternoon just in time for the storm to hit. It really hit hard!! 

 Before long we were in a major hailstorm. These pictures don't do it justice. It was eery hearing the hail hit the roof and windows.

Este braved the storm to grab a piece of hail to show how big they were. Keep in mind he has gigantic hands.

In the neighboring town the hail was softball size. There was extensive damage to cars and buildings. The hail broke through skylights at Walmart resulting in hail falling inside the store. Once the storm passed customers went outside only to find their back windows broken out of their cars.

Here, the damage was not quite on that level. We will need a new roof (along with all the other houses in the area) and the Suburban is covered in pock marks.

We are very grateful that it wasn't worse. This is a photo taken from a baseball game in town that night.

And all our phones kept going off with these alerts.

It is times like this that we look at our emergency preparedness and plan what to do in case of "what if..." actually happened. We are reminded of the power of Mother Nature. Maybe it was just her way of telling Aaron, "Happy Birthday!"