Tornado

Not sure where to start...On Saturday night, a tornado hit my hometown of Albertville. Specifically, my street, East Main St. was hit particularly hard. Thankfully, my parents were out of town when the storm hit. Our street has pretty much been destroyed. We live in the historic district of town which is full of beautiful, extremely old trees and houses. If you walked down my street (and you can't drive down it now) right now, you would not recognize it. I am so thankful I had lots of pics of how it looked before. (view Easter post) It's really hard to even put the damage into words...Sister had preffed me on the damages, but it didn't hit home with me until I actually saw it for myself. When I initially arrived on Sunday afternoon, I literally did not recognize my house or my street and I of course cried for a long time. It seems surreal right now...like I'm in a nightmare, but am going to wake up and it will all be back to normal.

My family is particularly blessed because our house did not fair quite as bad as many others on our street. There are lots of houses left completely without roofs and windows, TONS of fallen trees and other damages. We had a few trees fall through our attic which has caused water damage upstairs and countless tress fell. Also, there was a lot of damage to our garage. But the thankful thing is that there were no fatalities in the tornado. Unfortunately, we're still without power at this time. A HUGE shoutout to our amazing family and friends who have all pitched in to help...Aunt Jenn and Uncle D, the Sprouses, the Ross', and the Casey's. We couldn't have made as much progress thus far without y'all. You know it's a pretty bad scenario when you see Governor Riley out in front of your house surveying all the damage.

East Main St..this view is standing right in front of my house, looking towards the highway

Uncle D, Dad, and Mr. Rusty patching up the roof

A view from our 2nd floor porch...looks like a bomb has been dropped.

We have to park at CVS and then walk up the street...this is Day 2 of disaster relief/clean-up

Looking up towards our house

These lights somehow ended up turned in the exact position....kind of creepy!

Back driveway/yard

I thought I'd pose with a few of the fallen trees. :(

This view shows directly across the street from our house...yes, one of those houses completely lost their roof.

Our beautiful cherry trees are no more!

Our family appreciates all the prayers and thoughts sent our way! Please continue to pray for the whole city of Albertville and all the people affected by the storm. Houses can be rebuilt, but lives cannot...that is the important thing to remember!!!!!!