Off to see the Wizard

A snapshot from my seat in the RV as we approached the storm.

Even with all of the craziness up until now, there has never been a day that I have actually considered turning around and just going back home. Until today.

Let me start where we left off. Saturday night, we were all tucked in after a long day at the amusement park, when at midnight, my father in law comes knocking on the door, holding Macy. As I mentioned in my last post, Macy rode some seriously big kid roller coasters. Roller coasters that I wasn’t totally willing to get on. Well, there was one that we couldn’t see from the line as it was behind a ton of trees. She was JUST tall enough to go so on she went with Shawn and the rest of the family as I waited with the boys. When she got off, she was in tears. I decided to give it a whirl and took a ride with my ever willing, awesome sister in law (who had been on it 4 times in a row). I was freaking terrified. All I could think the whole time was that I could not believe my 6 year old had been on this ride! So I shouldn’t have been surprised when Papaw brought her to us at midnight because she was having nightmares over that ride. By 1am she had decided to think ‘happy thoughts’ (God love her, she is the best) and she fell asleep.

Sunday was a pretty glorious day. Why, you ask? Because I went somewhere. Alone. Where? To the MALL! Yep, I got to leave the RV and shop. Alone. For almost 3 hours. And I got to take my in-laws cool Wrangler and listen to XM radio (I totally need to get that) and rock out to Billy Jean and Hammer Time. It was fantastic. I did not pack well (shocker, see entry 2) and feel like the kids are constantly running out of clothes (probably due to the washer – see entry 5) so Old Navy hooked us up with some items for the next 5 weeks.

On Sunday evening we got to go see where Aunt Heather lives. She has the coolest loft in downtown Kansas City and there were lots of tears as we all said goodbye to her. We love our Aunt Cray Cray and are so happy that we can now picture where she is when we talk to her!

So now we are here to this morning. Monday morning. We took off from Kansas City around 11am this morning, only an hour behind schedule, which we now know is actually well above our average, and all systems were a go at that point. Macy and Luke decided they wanted to ride with my in-laws and their two big cousins, so we just had Jude. (However, I would have exchanged 8 children for Jude given his temperament today.) We had about 5.5 hours to go to Oakley, Kansas, where I had read the temperatures were going to be 101 today. We passed some beautiful countryside that totally looked like what I would expect Kansas to look like – so picturesque! About 20 miles outside of Oakley, I started noticing dark clouds ahead. Shawn even made a comment about how he had thought about what we would do in a storm and how we could all go to one of those metal circular water tunnels that you see in ravines and hide in there should we need to. “Really? You have thought about this? I do not take comfort in the fact that you have thought about this.”  That was my reaction. Little did I know I should have been more concerned about what would happen when we were actually driving.

About 5 minutes later, the sky was darker and the winds were heavier. We contemplated pulling over when we saw a huge rig pulled over on the side of the road, but kept going. That was not wise. Within minutes, we were struck by winds like I have never seen or felt before. You could hardly see the road in front of us and Shawn was literally fighting with the steering wheel. He was pulling the RV to the left and the entire thing was moving to the right. We went over an overpass and I was convinced we were going to just blow right over the bridge. The next thing we knew there was a huge gust of wind and we heard a super loud noise that we knew wasn’t good. It is hard to describe but it was loud and it was bad. Jude screamed at the top of his lungs (he already hates storms) and I was completely petrified. Our windshield wipers blew off the RV and at that point Shawn yelled for me to call his parents to see where they were, who we believed to be ahead of us. Water was coming in by Shawn’s window and something was flapping on the side and on top of the roof, which we believed to be the canvass roll-out cover to our slide. Shawn’s mom answered and I pretty much started crying into the phone, spouting nonsense, but thankful to know they were okay since my other two kids were in her car. What I didn’t know at the time was that they had pulled off an exit b/c they thought that was where we were headed, so they had missed this piece of the storm. After what felt like an eternity and was probably about 3 minutes in total, we eventually got through the worst of it and Shawn’s parents pulled up behind us and told us to basically creep along the interstate until we got to our exit in 2 miles. Once we got there, we were able to assess the damage. We did in fact lose the entire canvass roll-out/cover to our slide, but thankfully it still works. (The canvass extends over the top of the slide that moves out when we are parked and apparently only keeps the roof of the slide from getting dirty. Thankfully it doesn’t actually serve an important purpose.) Both casings to the AC units on top are cracked, there is a small puncture in the roof, our internal A/C vent cover blew out onto the floor, which we were able to get that back and secured into the ceiling, and we should be able to buy a windshield wiper across the street from where we are staying tonight at the truck stop. We learned once we got here that the winds were up to 60 mph and they were advising people in our area to seek shelter. Not sure if I mentioned that we haven’t figured out how to listen to music/radio on our RV, but clearly that needs to move to the top of the list.

You know how after something traumatic happens and you feel so shaken up that you cry after the fact? That was what happened to me today. I was so shaken up and just so thankful that it was over. For the first time, I considered throwing in the towel and heading home. We met a guy here at the campground tonight who is from Oklahoma, neighbor to this horrific storm attracting state of Kansas, who said that we were just unlucky. Considering the “luck” we have had this far, I am sincerely afraid to keep going. What if we hit a storm while driving up a mountain with no guardrail? It’s best I not think about it.

I am so thankful that this is the extent of the damage and that we are all okay. It is widely known that I love to exaggerate a good story, but today is not one of those days. Today was awful and I am just happy to be here with my family.

Tomorrow we head to Colorado and my parents are coming in to visit for a few nights. I can’t wait to see my mommy and daddy. As Dorothy said, there’s no place like home.

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