TORNADOES!

Okay, since I'm a California girl at heart, all of my Texas followers will have to roll your eyes in silence at my freaking out (and probably my exaggerating!) of our recent storm. BUT, had you seen the twister on top of my HOUSE my Texas friends would probably be flipping the heck out too :)
Okay, so Thursday night we were expecting rain and 'possible' thunderstorms. Our lovely weatherman said NOTHING about golf-ball sized hail and tornadoes, so imagine our surprise when hail started hitting our windows. Being the California girl, I ran outside to collect some hail balls to freeze. It was right about then that I looked up at the sky and noticed the really cool clouds rolling in, so I ran in to grab my camera. As I came back in the house our TV screamed at us that we were under a Tornado warning, and that it was right about over our house. The news said they were detecting 'sizeable rotation' and showed a map with a tornado right in our area. When I went back outside to take some quick pictures, I started snapping, and that's when I saw it...a cloud that was DIRECTLY above me (I was standing in the doorway of our back porch for those of you who have been to our house) and there was a round cloud SPINNING in a circle...no joke. I screamed like a stupid little girl and yelled for Scott (who told me I was crazy, until he saw it). Then the winds that had been swooshing our trees from side to side went SILENT all at once. You couldn't hear a sound...not even our 16 dogs were barking. I have NEVER heard such an eary silence before in my life. And then Scott said "Oh, that's not good." SO we raced into the house and grabbed Gunner & Karlee, said a prayer and waited what seemed like ages, but was probably not more than 3-4 minutes. Scott went back outside, and as quickly as it came it was gone. Thankfully God answered our prayers, and the cloud that was rotating didn't drop out of the sky until it blew a few more miles. A town close to us got some damage from that same cloud I'm telling you about, so God was watching out for us. Yes, I'm a wimp when it comes to Tornadoes. I'll take an earthquake any day over a tornado! At least with Earthquakes you don't know they're coming until they're gone. With a tornado you KNOW it's coming, and let's just say the suspense gets to me.
Okay, finally got the pictures posted....



<--And here it is...see the round circle at the top of this picture? That is the tornado! It was spinning in a circle, but thankfully it stayed in the sky and didn't come out as a funnel. Okay, and there it is a few seconds later... (leaving thankfully) And there it is no more than 3 minutes after it was over our house....you can just barely see it, this is where it was headed for Hughes Springs, where it actually touched down and caused damage.