The Circus and Crazy Weather

Last Saturday (Feb. 21) we took the kids to the Circus downtown at Philips Arena. We took Marta again since it was such a hit the week before. Jackson was entertained for all of about 10 minutes and then he started saying "It's time to go home." Drake sat with his Grandma Cersey and from what I hear he had a great time.

We were joined by Jessica, Andy, Megan and Alexis, Jana, Ta, and Anthony, Grandma Cersey, Brindi, Ryan, and Aiden, Thayne, Jones, and Lacey, Danielle, Andy, Brooklyn, and London.

The clown parts were pretty boring, and the animals were kind of a bust since the dogs failed to catch a lot of their frisbees, the tigers looked depressed and failed to do as they were instructed, and the elephants pooed all over themselves. But there were a few entertaining parts like the 7 motorcycles speeding around in the same cage. A few of the little guys slept through most of the show, but I think for the most part we all had a good time.

A week ago Jackson, Drake and I were reading on the couch when Grandma Cersey called to tell us a big storm was on its way and that we should turn on the news. When I turned on the TV it was evident that we were about to get hammered not only by thunder, lightning, and hail, but possibly by a tornado. There were Tornado warnings for our area all over the news and the radar indicated that the eye of one of the storms was headed right for us. Now, we get these kind of storms here in Georgia several times a year and normally I just go about my business and ignore the storm outside, but this time I'll admit I was a little nervous. Justin hadn't gotten home from work yet. He was on his way home, which was worrisome, but he was actually driving behind the storm so he was fine. So, I prepared for the onslaught by running upstairs and getting the mattress off of Jackson's bed. I set up camp for the boys in a little niche in the center of our house on the main floor with the mattress propped up to shield us from any potential flying debris (we would have been in the downstairs bathtub but on the news they said to avoid the west side of your house since that was the direction the tornadoes were likely to come from). The hail started to beat down on our house and it was so loud that I could have sworn that all of our windows were braking. The thunder, lighting, and hail crashed down on us for a good 10 minutes or so. Jackson was upset, but we said a prayer and that calmed him down. It turned out that there were no tornadoes in our immediate area (there were tornadoes in other counties that did a lot of damage) and the hail only broke some of our outdoor lights, which is surprising considering the size of the ice (Justin is holding a few pieces of it in the picture below).
The next day my mother asked Jackson about the storm and he told her about the loud banging and said that he had been scared. She responded by saying "but you were OK because your mommy was there to protect you" and he said, "No Grandma we said a prayer and Jesus protected me." Is that not the sweetest thing ever? I wouldn't be surprised if the faith of my baby boy saved the whole city from death and destruction.