A first day to remember!

Well, it was traumatic, but the kids survivied their first day of school! It started out like most first days of school -- cute hair, cute clothes, new backpacks, new lunchboxes -- lots of excitement. We walked the kids over to the school with all the other kids on the street and got the girls into the gym and in their teachers' lines. When I told Dani to kiss me goodbye, she smooshed she cheek next to mine -- when I said, "No, a kiss!" She mumbled, "but I don't want to!" Apparently first grade is too big to kiss your mom now! Then Jason and I left, thinking they'd have an exciting day at school.

And an exciting day it was! Around 3, I was getting ready to go get them from school and the sky got dark. Then it started thundering like crazy and the rain started beating down. Jason and I stuck our heads outside to check out the storm and heard the loudspeaker at the school annoucing that all the parents that were waiting outside for their children had to come inside and they would not be releasing the kids from school because of a tornado warning. No tornado ever happened near us (supposedly there were 3 in the Chicago area), but the kids were after school for nearly an hour, sitting in the hallways, bathrooms and interior classrooms, next to the walls, indian-style, with their heads in their laps! From the kids accounts, it sounds like everything was kind of chaotic. Emily's teacher was on car duty, so no one was in her classroom. Our neighbor across the street was one of the parents that had to go into the school for safety and he said he could hear kids screaming in the halls and at one point, he saw his own first-grade son wandering the halls by himself! According to the girls, they were both scared and cried. Dani ended up in the same bathroom as a girl from our ward, who sat with her and comforted her and even gave her some candy. Once the storm subsided, they made all the kids return to their classrooms for roll and then FINALLY released them to their parents -- the girls finally were back in Jason's possession 50 minutes after school should have let out!

But that wasn't the end of the storm. Within a couple of hours, it started up again -- more intense and much longer than before. We barbequed for dinner, and luckily, the storm didn't start up again until Jason brought all the food in, but during dinner, all hell broke loose -- constant thunder and pouring rain -- our street flooded to anke depth, the water was into people's yards! There were rivers flowing through everyone's backyards to the drain the back corner of our yard. And it all continued until probably 2 or 3 a.m. The kids all woke up in tears and Jason and I them up and each slept with 2 kids. As I went to sleep that night the thunder was literally constant and I remember thinking, "I love a good thunderstorm, but this is getting ridiculous!" I imagine the storm that the Nephites experienced before Christ came to the Americas was something along the same lines!

The next morning, the weather was better, but the day before had left quite an impression. Dani didn't want to go back to school, but once she did, she had a good day. They definitely won't be forgetting this first day of school for a long time!