JUST WISHING ALL OF YOU A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS.

     We spent three wonderful days with our youngest daughter and her family for Christmas.  It was only about a 3 hour drive away, so it was a quick trip.  We did have torrential rains for about an hour, but after that it was just fine.  We ate way too much and received gifts we didn't expect.  All in all, we had a great Christmas, and I hope you did too.  Our other daughter lives in Florida, and their weather was in the 70's and basically beautiful.  I shall be experiencing this in about 3 days, because I'm going to Florida to stay with them for 9 days.  My DH has opted to stay here for some peaceful days on the farm with the TV all to himself.  Hmmmm, I see shopping and fun in my immediate future!

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.