Growing up in Salt Lake City I always knew 2 things. 1) at any moment we could all die from a massive earth quake. The earth quake isn't a matter of if, but when. And 2)we were protected from tornadoes. When we moved to Denver they got switched on me, no earth quakes but tornadoes. However after living here 10 years I realized that Tornadoes only occur on the east side of the range - we are too close to the mountains. My phone get alerts for tornadoes often, but they are always out by the airport. So when I was driving Noah therapy and we got an alert on our phones for a tornado I ignored it. But then we got another. Noah looked at his phone and said "it says the tornado is happening in our location" I told him he wasn't reading it right and to tell me what counties. I pulled over and looked at my phone, he was right, it said a tornado was coming right to our area.
I didn't believe it, so we kept driving, I noticed the weather was changing, it was windier but also a weird calm and the clouds looked weird. I decided we would go home, as I flipped a u-ey to go back home things changed quick and I knew we wouldn't make it back, so I pulled into a neighborhood that I felt like would offer us protection and waited it out. I was right about the neighborhood. The townhouses are close together and really high and from our perspective there wasn't a tornado, there was barley a storm. The garbage cans didn't even move. When it was over we drove out of the neighborhood to find chaos all around us. Giant trees were uprooted and fences were blown over. Then I got this text picture from my neighbor.
NO!!!! Our beautiful tree!! We love our tree. Jason was at work until 9 om that night, I had noah with me, and all my other kids were at home. Eve and Dane are particularly scared of the weather and we have been trying hard to tell them that they are not in danger. Brock was baysitting, dane was awake, but eve was still asleep. I told him to take them in the basement and play, but not to say anything about the tornado. We rushed home to check out the damage.
I knew we needed to get it out of the road asap and couldnt wait for Jason to get home. I put out a fb post for a chain saw and got a few offers. I handed my teenagers hand clippers, told them to start clipping while I went and gathered chain saws.
When I got home about 15 minutes later I was greeted with an army of helpers with their own tools. I was overhwlemed with gratitude for the men, women, and teens who came to help.
We had Brother Stolk, Brother weister, and Daved. Rick and Sami Burt. Chris West and his sons. The oakerstroms, coulsons, Marleys, dave gardner, the marley neighbor that I had never met (and still havnen't seen sicne). Rachel came down and took care of Dane and Eve all night and Gage helped with the tree.
The neighborhood girls. This doesnt have anything to do with the tornado. These girls all lived on this street and have been friends since they were babies/toddlers. As they have grown up they have stopped hanging out. On the night of the tornado everyone was out side helping. Honestly, mot of the girls refused to help (except Sami). But it did my heart good to see them together again.
I had zero expectations that we would get "done" by the time Jason got home, I thought at most we could get the bulk of it out of the street. But because of every ones hard work and service (ESPECIALLY MY 4 TEENS) we worked for about 5 hours straight and we got it all done. Jason came home right as it started getting dark and worked with us the last hour binding the last of the bushels and providing clean up. It was so nice getting a fresh worker at the end. We were weary.
Before we went to bed our yard looked like this. So sad. But amazing we did that all in one night.
We had the stump for a while and while the kids and I were in Utah Jason and Scott Coleman tore it out.
Which also broke our sprinklers, so you know... one thing after another. We have missed our tree so much. My flowers are sad not having the shade all day. Me and the babies would spend our mornings in the shade of the tree in the sand box while I would eat breakfast, read, or weed. Those days are long gone as we now have full sun in the mornings (that is why I made the sandbox in the front yard - I have been having breakfast on my porch in the mornings for 10 years and now... its over - so sad!)
Having a tornado come through also gave us opportunities to serve. We were overwhelmed with the generosity of our friends and neighbors. as they worked along side us in our own disaster we learned that many of them had downed trees or fences but came to our aid first. My children were very touched by this and for the next 2 or 3 days went out and either helped those who helped us, or helped anyone who needed help. This was true for church on Sunday, everyone went to church in work clothes and after sacrament meeting every family was assigned a zone to go help clean up. it was a great experience.
