The missing months

September and October just flew by. As is customary of life, things have been crazy around here. After my doctor decided to move and close his practice, I found another. I was apprehensive at first, as I had a previous bad experience with him, but he is turning out to be okay. While Paul was working on a fire sometime in September, I ended up with a nasty fever. I had to suck it up to take care of Emma, but it wiped me out. It broke on its own in the middle of the night, but I still felt cruddy for a while. I also caught a cold with a cough that would not go away. Unfortunately, Emma and Paul were also sick. Emma had the cold first, and was feeling fine in just a few days. It took me about a week, and Paul was sick for several weeks.

By October we were all feeling fine, but we had a surprise in store. On October 6, our neighborhood was hit by a tornado. Our part of Arizona was hit with 8 tornadoes in 24 hours. It had been storming all night, so I didn't sleep well at all. I seemed to be the only having a hard time relaxing. At 5 that morning, the storm seemed to suddenly pick up, and I told Paul I was sick of it. The wind got louder and the house started shaking. I could hear cracking noises, and I was terrified. I jumped out of bed and ran to Emma's room to check on her. She was still sleeping and things seemed to be calming down outside. I stood outside of her room trying to figure out what I should do, and Paul convinced me to go back to bed. We realized the electricity had gone out, so Paul went to find some candles so we could get up and get ready for the day. I was still really nervous from the storm and kept telling Paul that something really terrible had happened. We started noticing the sound of sirens and shouting outside. Paul saw that one of our windows had cracked. I called my mom to tell her something was going on but I wasn't sure what. I said they would hear about Bellemont on the news, and I wanted to let her and my dad know that we were alright. I said I would call when I knew more.

By then, the sun started coming up, and I saw that the back fences had blown over. I was trying to figure out a way to warm some milk up for Emma (she still likes warm milk in the mornings and before bed), but the pilot on the stove wouldn't light. Paul had gotten Emma out of bed, and I went upstairs to get her. We noticed people kept shining lights in our windows, so we knew something serious was going on. I was standing at the top of the stairs with Emma when our back door opened. A man with a flashlight came in and said he was with the sheriff's department. He wanted to make sure we were alright. I said we were fine, and another man walked in behind the officer. I asked what was going on, and the officer said there had been a tornado. The other man was a neighbor, and he said we were very lucky. He was from three houses over, and their house had been completely destroyed. I would later find out that this neighbor, after assuring his family was safe, had gone down the street and turned off every one's gas lines. This would prove to be a blessing. There ended up being four gas leaks in our house, and I am terrified to think of what could have happened while I was trying to relight the stove if the gas had still been on.

At around 6am, Paul and I started wandering around outside to see what damage had been done. Besides a few cracked windows a destroyed garage door and a collapsed fence, we seemed to have thankfully gotten by with a minimal amount of damage. Our neighbors were not so lucky. The house next to ours had lost all of their windows and garage doors, the house next to theirs had lost their roof, and the third house over was almost completely gone. While I was talking to one of neighbors, we saw another tornado touching down. I had Emma, I grabbed the dogs and Paul, and we all hid in the downstairs closet. I decided we had gotten lucky once, and I was not going to tempt fate again. My boss and friend, Cheri, had already booked a room for us in Flagstaff, and I told Paul we needed to get out of the house as soon as it was safe enough to leave the house.

We ended up staying in a hotel for a week while we were waiting for the gas and electricity to be repaired. In the mean time, Paul stayed home from work to get our fenced repaired so the dogs could leave the garage. My mom, aunt, cousin and grandmother came up for a day to help Paul finish the fence and clean up the glass and debris outside. They were a great help, which was much appreciated. The following week, I had to go out of town for work. So back into a hotel I went. The week after I got back, Paul had to go out of town for work.

Our sweet little Emma had a rough time while we were in the hotel, but she felt much better once we able to go back home. By Halloween, Emma was back to her peppy self, but that's another post. I'm pretty sure this one has gotten long enough.