JUNE- Week One!

The first week of June was a big week in my family! My BABY brother Blake graduated from High School! I wasn't able to make it out to Idaho for the event but I was SUPER proud of him out in Kansas! All of us Hansen kids are out of high school! It feels SO weird to be getting old! I've been out of HS for 7 years now!

 WOW! 

I wanted to post some of his SENIOR pics done by the AMAZING Ashley MacKay Photography! 

The Button to her website is on my blog! 

He is the best brother any girl could ask for! 

Excited to watch you continue your football career at Idaho State University! 

(My old stompin' grounds! LOL!)

LOVE YA BLAKE! 

Wacky Weather in Misourri!- SUPER LONG POST!

Anybody that has spent some time in the midwest knows that some of the weirdest weather in the country goes on here! This is my 5th summer here and by far the scariest I have experienced! April always starts out really WET and COLD. I always end up investing in a Royals Blanket from the stadium shop when I forget mine at home (I think I am up to four of the same blanket!) My Ugg boots get a few more wears and I pack all my winter clothes from Idaho! 

Then the month MAY shows up...or otherwise known as the beginning of Tornado season. This month is filled with excessive RAIN, eerie TORNADO sirens blaring, damaging WINDS and one FRIGHTENED Idaho native!!! 

Let me CLARIFY...I grew up in Idaho! I have been in terrible SNOW storms, drove like an ice road trucker to get to school and i've been snowed in. That's nothing. I lived in CA for a summer after high school and felt my first earthquake as it woke me up out of a dead sleep! It was a weird feeling swaying and shaking. Creepy but ok. I spent two years living in FL with hurricanes (including Katrina) and it is scary but I handled it. 

I am PETRIFIED of tornadoes. 

Something about a FUNNEL of DESTRUCTION that you can visibly see coming at YOU creates SHEER FEAR within me and I PANIC!

Just so you know there is a PICTURE overload below but I feel like to get the PICTURE you must see ALL the PICTURES! 

 Here is one of the early storms we had in KC (We actually live in KS but basically all the same!)

Did you know that one of the warning signs of tornadoes is HAIL!?!?

 Like QUARTER size HAIL! 

 YIKES!

Billy was watching out the window practically in TEARS because his poor truck was getting pulverized and he couldn't fit it into garage! 

(That's what he gets for putting a lift on it!)

Up until the end of May this wasn't much out of the ordinary! The country had really devastating tornadoes break out in the South and in Oklahoma! We did have one night May 21 when the sirens went off in the middle of the night (This was a first for us...usually they are during the day!) and it woke us up out of a dead sleep! I opened my bedroom window to make sure that I wasn't dreaming and sure enough they were blaring! I turned on the news and the weatherman said to to get to our basement! I woke Billy up...sent him to get Kenley out of her room and I grabbed a few things and headed downstairs! He and Kenley went back to sleep in our guest bedroom but me being the one with the anxiety attacks stayed up until the entire 70mph storm passed! A tornado did touch down about 95 miles east of our house and pretty much leveled the small town Reading, KS killing one person! Below is a you tube video of the storm as it was trying to form! 

This is after it DID form and was heading north from Topeka towards Reading, KS! 

It is hard to see at first but wait for the lightning to light up the sky! If you listen carefully you can hear the sirens...HOLY SPOOKY!

The next day as new broke out that Reading, KS had been hit by this tornado I took Kenley to her first birthday party! I started talking with some of the parents and was eagerly trying to explain that the reason I look so terrible is from the lack of sleep from the storm the night before! They laughed at me being all KS natives saying that they are used to it and either ignore it or just go to the basement and go back to bed! I started to tell myself I need to cool it and stop being so paranoid! After Billy's game that afternoon we had a date night and headed to dinner and a movie! When we got home we got ready for bed and as Billy laid in bed and watched MLB network I proceeded to do my end of the day Facebook/TMZ check on my computer! 

Instead of the NORMAL news I start seeing blurbs about...

Breaking News: Extreme Tornado Hits Joplin, MO

Now this is where most of you will be able to jump in because everyone knows about the tornado that hit Joplin! We had NO idea it was happening because we were in a movie! We stayed up and watched the incoming news as it broke giving the first pictures of destruction that happened there. I spent the following morning watching the nonstop coverage of the the town that looked like rubble! Billy had spent time in Joplin as a teenager playing in Baseball Showcases! He lived with a host family that we still stay in touch with today so we immediately made contact with them to make sure they were ok! After a full day and terrible cell service we finally found out there were ok but knew many people that weren't! Here is a clip on Youtube from the actual E-5 twister! 

This other video you can't see anything but just listen.

This video was taken inside a gas station where people scrambled for cover from the storm.  The tornado hits about 2 min into the video.

(Warning: I actually started crying the first time I heard it so DON'T listen to it if you don't want to get upset but it does show the fear that these people had to go through!) 

I was so HUMBLED to see people in Kansas City and all over the country immediately come together to start giving relief to Joplin! A bunch of wives on our team started collaborating on how we could help! We decided to find out what people needed there and take a big load of supplies to them! We made runs to Walmart, Costco, the Dollar Store, through or closets (for clothes) and Goodwill in one day and we had collected as much as we could think of that they would need in the first few days of trying to rebuild! We spent the night at one of the girls house organizing our loads of stuff and waiting out ANOTHER anticipated storm. Everyone was pretty spooked so we didn't want to be by ourselves while our hubbies were out of town! 

The plan was to load it up and drive the two hours down to Joplin. I was actually scheduled to fly out later that next afternoon to Phoenix and I was torn on wether to just stay in KC or rearrange my day to go to Joplin with the girls early and have my babysitter pick Kenley up from preschool and just make sure to be back in time to head to the airport! I wanted to go SO bad but decided that it would be just to much to try to do all of that in one day so I gave STRICT instructions to the girls to take lots of pics of their relief trip! So, below are the pics courtesy of my good friend Jessica Wood! 

We had two carloads FULL of supplies!  

 Here is our group meeting with a host family from Joplin that one of the wive's husband used to live with. The family contacted their church and told the members where to meet up with our group and people came and picked up the supplies they were in need of. 

On their way back to Kansas City they had to drive through Joplin. There was only one road open each way and lots of traffic. The pics speak for themselves! 2 1/2 days after tornado! So SAD! 

Crews were everywhere trying to repair electricity and cleanup! 

Brand new cars on the lot are ruined.

The girls said it was so eerie to see all the trees with no leaves and the bark was literally stripped off! 

As they got deeper into the damaged area neighborhoods were gone. 

Cops were at every side street and you weren't allowed to leave the main road unless you had your drivers license with that street address on it! 

The X's that are marked on all the cars mean they have been searched for survivors/bodies.

(Look for all the orange x's on the cars in these pics!)

A mobile Pizza Hut came and served pizza to families.

Crazy how the storm took out this street of homes and the street behind it looks untouched! 

The window of this dollar store were blown out but things on the shelf were still perfectly stocked! 

While the girls were in Joplin I dropped Kenley off at preschool and headed home to pack my bags for my trip to Arizona that afternoon. I was on the phone with my realtor when all of a sudden I heard something...

Sirens. 

As I stayed on the phone with her I walked out into my garage just to make sure I wasn't crazy and sure enough the tornado sirens were going off. This didn't make sense because it was SUNNY and I couldn't see a dark cloud in sight. I knew it wasn't a TEST DAY (Where they test the sirens once a week on the same day at the same time!)Still talking to my realtor I walked back inside and turned on my TV just to be safe and the weather man was on. I had muted it so I could still talk on the phone. I reminded myself of the advice the parents gave me a few days prior that if there is a tornado warning ANYWHERE in the county they will set off the alarms for the ENTIRE county and it probably wasn't even close to us. I was half paying attention to the news when I noticed something different. The weatherman although I couldn't hear him LOOKED panicked! 

I asked my realtor to hold on a minute and turned up the volume. He was urging people to take cover. I sat there for a minute trying to figure out what town he was talking about then he says we have a confirmed tornado spotting on the 69 highway south of Overland Park, KS (where I live) 60 miles away.  It was roughly halfway between my house and Joplin, MO heading strait for Kansas City. A little timeline popped up on the TV giving  the estimated times of when it would be coming through different areas of the KC Metro. My "town" was on it and it was going to pass through in 22 min! I PANICKED!

I had to go get Kenley! 

 I quickly got off the phone and hopped in the car. 

At the point it was POURING rain. It was SO hard to see! I was driving as fast as I could! Her preschool is 1.5 miles from our house but it was in between me and the storm! I frantically was calling Billy (who was in Baltimore)! 

When he answered my voice started cracking and I was shaking. 

I made him stay on the phone with me until I got to preschool. 

When I pulled in there were cars whipping into the lot left and right! Parents were sprinting into the school through the heavy rain and that is when I hit high alert! The LOCALS were panicking too! Crap!

I ran inside and the teachers were pulling cribs into the hallways (They also have daycare for babies!) The director started telling the parents that all the kids were in their classroom bathrooms and we were allowed to take them as long as we let their teachers know! She asked me what the status of the storm was because they didn't have a tv there to watch updates! I quickly told her...ran down to Kenley's classroom (which was emtpy and dark). I opened up the bathroom door which they share with the adjacent classroom and there were 30 2-3 year olds and 6 teachers all piled in sitting on the floor. I grabbed Kenley and ran out to the car! We were both SOAKED!  

I called Billy back to let him know I had Kenley and was headed home! 

There were cop cars driving up and down the streets with their lights and sirens going alerting people to stay inside and find a safe spot! 

Then it hit me that the girls from the Joplin trip above were on their way back and should be driving on the same highways that the tornado was spotted! 

I started crying.

I lost cell service due to the clouds coming in and couldn't call Billy back. I started dialing all the girls that I knew were in Joplin and all the girls I new were in Overland Park to make sure they were somewhere safe! No Service! 

We made it home and rushed downstairs turned on the TV in time to see the weather man say they have an unconfirmed touchdown at 135th  & Metcalf. 

I LIVE at 134th & Metcalf! YIKES! 

This is a video on Youtube that was shot just down the street from our house! 

Here is another video that is a few neighborhoods over from us.

We went into the storage room away from the window and hid out there until the storm passed. Luckily, we didn't have any damage besides some branches ect strewn across the yard! The storm moved on and split into two separate storms and the news was capturing the funnel clouds trying to come down as it passed through KC! It was so crazy to see it on TV!  One moved directly through downtown KC (where Billy's truck was parked at the airport!) and then the other broke off and headed towards the stadium!

Here is a pic of the same storm as it passed over downtown KC! 

This is called a wall cloud...the tornadoes form out of this! 

 I kept an eye on it for the next couple hours and the storm that was near the stadium did touch down and actually stayed on the ground for over 20 min and destroyed some building in Sedalia, MO and injured 15 people! 

Let's just say I headed for the airport that evening and was GLAD to get out of the midwest for a while! 

(SORRY ABOUT THE WORLDS LONGEST POST!)