LAST NIGHT I SPENT 2 HOURS IN A BASEMENT

Have you ever hidden in a basement from a tornado?  Well, last night my husband and I did, as well as did
many other people who live in our area of East Tennessee.  We had heard that bad weather, with possible tornadoes was heading our way, but by 11:00 P.M., the weather was still quite calm.  We could hear thunder way off, but it didn't seem to be coming any closer.  We decided to watch the 11:00 news, just in case things might  have changed.  And they had!  My cell phone rang with the weather alert alarm just as the weatherman's cell phone did on TV.  And it said that really bad weather, including tornadoes was heading right towards us.  Yuk!! Right at bedtime, never fails!

We don't have a basement in our house, and we live on top of a hill, so we headed down the hill to my brother-in-law's house.  He does have a basement.  We actually sat out on his front porch and listened to the rain and watched the multitudes of lightening strikes.  The wind never did pick up much, but we had to head downstairs finally because a bad "tornadic storm"  was headed our way.  Nothing ever happened, though, except our poor Brittany spaniel "Nicky" was scared to death of all the thunder noise and kept trying to get in the basement too.  So, at 1:00 A.M., we finally decided to go back home and go to bed - the storms had passed on.

Now tonight, we're under storm alert again, but this time, we're staying home.

SOME TIME WITH OUR DAUGHTERS AT THE LAKE

We left with our visiting daughter, son-in-law and their son Cade to spend 2 days and a night with our youngest daughter on Norris Lake just outside of LaFollette, north of Knoxville.  It was a huge cabin with 3 stories, 5 bedrooms and three full baths, and Kim and her family had rented it for a week and taken our boat to the dock right below the cabin.  The first few days they spent with their employees and their families, but the last three days were for family members - and boy did a lot of family members show up!  Kim's husband's family and a baby showed up, as well as the 5 of us with my sister and brother (who were only there for Thursday during the day).  We all had to bring our pot-luck offerings, so there was food galore!

For the most part, we spent all of our time either on the boat or on the dock  floating in the water on our life vests.  The younger kids were learning to ski on youth skiis tied together, while Benjamin, the teenager, practiced his wake boarding and slalom skiing.  I prefered to stay at the dock and just stay cool floating in the water.

At about 5:00, the afternoon storm arrived with a vengance, and by the time we got back to the house, the wind was roaring, the thunder and lightening got closer and closer, and our electricity went out.  So much for warming up our pot-luck supper!  It was really quite a storm all over east Tennessee.  the Smokies were really hit hard.  Two people were killed when trees fell on them, and people in the campgrounds were trapped in by trees across the roads. As for us,  Ben's family all left, and my brother and sister had to head for home too, so that just left our family with Kim and hers.  We almost left too, but all the kids began to cry, Kim started to cry, and then I started to cry, because I felt that we were deserting the ship, so to speak.  So, as it turned out, my husband drove into town and found a CVS pharmacy that was open and bought three flashlights.  We had hot dogs on the grill and played charades in the dark, and the kids absolutely loved it.  Finally, at about 10:00 P.M., the electricity came back on, and things returned to normal, and we all got a good night's sleep.  We did have to leave the next day, but I'm so glad that we didn't ruin things by leaving the night before.  Kim and Ben had planned so much for this family get-together, and I know she would have been so disappointed if we left just because the electricity was out

On the way home, we stopped at the Museum of Appalachia in Norris, TN.  My next few posts will be all about that.