Tornado Chasers

I am finally getting around to updating our blog! The past few weeks have been crazy!!! I am just going to start at the beginning, starting with our last night in Milwaukee and ending with our final destination....Spokane (with a stop in Utah on the way). The last few days in Wisconsin were spent saying our "See you soon's" to some of our closest friends/family. I am so glad we were able to go through the whole med school thing together. It made the four years go by so fast. We are going to miss you all!!! 

It is crazy to think that Colby and I had spent more of our time together (married) in Milwaukee than we did in Utah. It was kind of sad leaving because so many BIG events happened while living in Wisconsin. Anyway, back to our awesome story about our trip to Spokane. Keep scrolling down. I will give you pictures along the way. 

                                Me (No, I am not breastfeeding), Jamie, and Les 
Sam gave Taters a locket to keep close to her heart while they are apart. It has a picture of each of them inside it. It makes me feel so bad when she asks me if she can go play at Sammy's house. Tonight I told her that we are going to go to church tomorrow and she will be able to make some new friends. She asked me if Sam was going to be there. I told her no and tried to explain to her that he lives in Wisconsin and she told me that he could just drive here tomorrow after church. She also asked Colby today if Sam was going to come see our new house since she saw his new house. SAD!!!!!
The whole gang

Jared, Colby, and Jer-Bear

That next day, WEDNESDAY, ABF dropped off the trailer and we started loading the truck. Thanks for all your help Jared, Cameron, and Micah!!!!

ABF picked up the trailer that night and I can't even explain to you how loud Tatum started crying/screaming. She was so sad and confused. She didn't understand why this truck took her dollhouse, jeep, and all her toys. She literally ran outside and was screaming so loud that our cute neighbor Pete came out to see if she was o.k. We calmed her down with a 2lb bag of M&M's. That night we made it to Iowa City. 

THURSDAY....

We were on the road again that next morning and were excited when we reached Omaha, Nebraska. That meant we were half way to Utah. Colby's parents called us to check in and told us to be careful because there were severe weather warnings and tornado watches throughout Nebraska. We didn't think much of it at the time because the weather looked fine with blue skies and white fluffy clouds. It all started once we reached mile marker 280. 

Let me just tell you that we are now officially TORNADO CHASERS!!!!

Tatum had to go to the bathroom again so we decided to stop at the next rest stop we saw. Right before reaching the rest stop it started to get really windy and cloudy. Once we stopped the wind was pretty bad. Colby was getting Tate out of the car and was worried that the tree next to us was going to fall over because of the creaking noise it kept making. He ran her into the bathroom and as soon as they got back in the car it started to rain and get more windy. The first thing Colby says while pulling out of the rest stop was that the weather looked like tornado weather. Well it was!!!! The clouds started to get so low, I am not kidding when I say almost as low as some of the telephone poles, and it got so dark. I have never seen it get so dark so fast in the middle of the day. I have also never seen the sky look so scary before. You could see the clouds above us rotating and the clouds were moving so fast. The wind was blowing like crazy and it started to rain harder and harder. Then the "real" tornado chasers pass us on the road. Everyone on I-80 slowed down to about 25 miles and hour or slower because they couldn't see due to the rain. Then the rain drops got bigger and bigger and don't worry, turned into hail, the size of golf balls. 

I forgot to mention that we are in our expedition pulling our corolla. Anyway, people on the freeway start pulling over under the overpasses because they didn't want the hail to destroy their cars. We found a spot under an overpass with just enough room to cover our expedition, but not our corolla. There were probably about three other cars under the same one. We tried to drive out from under the overpass but we were now blocked in. We couldn't go in reverse because of the type of trailer we were pulling. We could hear the hail pounding our corolla. You could see the hail bouncing off the freeway. Two other cars decided to stop under the freeway in the slow lane to the left of us, which means they are making I-80 a one lane road. Diesels were flying by honking. Yeah, we decided and learned later that it is probably not smart to stop under a freeway pass when cars can't see where they are going and when you can't go in reverse, but what do you do, keep driving and get nailed by golf balls where it can destroy your car which means you will have to pay lots of money or stay under an underpass and risk the chances of getting hit by a tornado. Plus, we were just following the lead of the local Nebraskans!!! :) Anyway, we did both. Our corolla got nailed with hail and a tornado touched down within a couple miles of us while we were under the overpass. Once the hail stopped the cars in front of us started to pull out. We were on our way again. Then we came to a stop within five minutes of leaving the overpass. Two diesels got in a wreck because of the weather so we sat there for a bit while they opened up one lane. Right after opening the lane, the weather started getting bad again. The sky got all dark and it started raining again. Don't worry, a second tornado touches down another few miles behind us. It crossed I-80 and knocked down a bunch of telephone poles. We just kept driving to drive out of it and once we did the sky got so blue. There wasn't a cloud in the sky. 

We stopped at the next rest stop because Tate had to go to the bathroom again. We all got out and noticed about 8 dings all over our corolla. Then we noticed a hole in the back window of the car, but not just a hole, the whole window was shattered. We didn't know what to do with it and since the hole was in the lower back corner of the window we didn't think it would cause the whole window to blow out. But it did!!!!!! We were on the freeway and Colby looked back to check on the car and he saw the whole window blow out. He said it looked like a parachute. Now we were just hoping that nothing would fly out of the car window while we were pulling over. We stopped again to figure out what to do with our car. Luckily, we had the roll of plastic that we used to wrap our couch in the back of our car. So we wrapped our car since we had awhile until we were in Utah. We still had another night at a hotel and our corolla was packed with our bikes, helmets, etc. 

Tatum was super happy at the time!

We started driving again and in about ten minutes we saw all a bunch of the wrap flapping in the wind. AWESOME!!!! We pulled over again and Colb ran to the gas station and bought some duct tape. 

We were finally on the road again. We made it to our next hotel only about five hours later than we wanted. Once we got to Utah we had the window replaced. 

So that is our Tornado story. Even though it was a long drive with dents and a broken window we were glad nothing worse happened, such as getting sucked up by a tornado! :) 

 OH, but don't worry, our car problems don't end here.  We were headed out to the Knolls to go dirt biking and four wheeling with my family and a piece of rubber flew up from under neath the car next to us and hit our side view mirror and shattered the mirror on our expedition.  I just have to add this in too so lets just jump ahead for a little bit. We got home from Disney Land two days ago and the starter in our corolla is going out so the car wouldn't start in the parking lot. All I can say is $$$$$$.

Anyway, the rest of the drive from Utah to Spokane was beautiful. We love Spokane so far and are excited to be here. It is gorgeous here! I will post more pictures tomorrow of Spokane, the Knolls, and our trip to Disney Land.