Well, blow me down!

I was outside removing the car seats and cleaning the van to put them back in their spots.  Their assigned spots were changing and that was part of the reason for removing them...that and they really know how to trash the van with all their wrappers and cereal.  I was under a deadline and paying most attention to Baby Girl and my progress.  I was amazed I was able to unhook those seats considering the strength Doug uses to hook them in to keep our children safe.  I was speeding along and hopeful about the new seat assignments.  Jericho can't kick Gabriel if they are on different bench seats, one in front of the other.  No one can try to get out of sitting in their booster seat with the excuse that they are going to entertain a baby.  Each older kid will share a bench seat with a younger kid.  There will even be more room for me if I have to sit in the back while Doug is driving when we all go somewhere together.

Clouds were coming near, but I wasn't worried.  The forecast said 10% chance of rain.  Do you know what we get when it says that?  Zip.  Zilch.  Nada.  I grabbed Avigayil to bring her inside to put her in her car seat because we needed to leave.  As I turned around to look at the clouds, they were interesting and I wanted to grab a camera, but I didn't really have time.  One had this weird cone shape, but it was pointing parallel to the ground.  Really weird, I thought.  I wasn't worried about it because its position in the sky was a place where the rain would skirt around us.  Besides, it wasn't pointed at the ground.

I need to learn to trust my double-takes.  I hadn't closed the van doors because I intended on putting the children right into it.  I hadn't gotten around to closing the garage door yet or bringing in the vacuum.  All of a sudden, the house got slammed by wind and rain.  When it stopped blowing the house door closed so forcefully, I ran outside and shut the van side door, which hadn't shut because it was a slider, closed the trash can lid (both had toppled over), ran into the garage, shut the garage door and made sure it went down all the way, and re-entered the house.  The cardboard box the boys were playing with knocked out the post on the porch and covered the vacuum.

After the rain stopped, we had to go outside and see how our poor plants fared. The zucchini was flipped.  The peppers were laying on their sides.  I mean the plant, not the pot.  The flowers on the hill and all the grass there was flattened; well, a 30 or 45 degree angle, anyway.  It must have been a 50mph wind like the storm watch said, the storm watch I didn't notice because I was cleaning the van.  All I can say is: wow.