I don't think we are in Kansas Toto...

For those of you who may not have heard.....Missouri gets it's fair share of tornadoes.  There have been some major ones in the 11 years I have lived here.  2 years ago, one pretty much took out an entire terminal at the St Louis airport.  Friday night, one came a little to close to home for us...literally.

I was working my normal Friday night shift at Ann Taylor at West County Mall. Around 8:15 the security guards came by our store and told us we needed to get to the first floor.  We closed up, grabbed our phones and headed down.  The hall way by the bathrooms was way too crowded so we sat up against another store, as far as we could get out from under the glass sky lights.  I could see major lightning. I tried calling J to tell him we had to close the store but he didn't answer. A little while later, he texted me telling me he and our dog were in the basement and were having a hard time making a phone call.   He did say he thought our house was ok.  I knew things must have gotten bad for J to go to the basement.  He is always the guy standing out on the porch or in the garage watching the storms roll in. When I finally was able to talk to him, I found out he was ok first off, our house was ok, but we had no power.

After we were released back up to our store around 8:45 (and some lady was waiting for us to do a return...seriously)  We rushed to get the store looking decent, since we close at 9.  I was heading home by 10pm and had a hard time getting home.  The road I take of the page extension was pitch black because of the power outage.  Half way down, I had to turn around because a fallen tree was blocking my way.  Once I got home, J met me in the garage (he had to manually open it) with a flashlight.  

We were woken up around 2am with bright lights on....yay the power was back! That morning we went out and surveyed the damage.  We are lucky, only a leak in our new roof. I contacted the owner and let him know.  We did have other peoples siding and gutters in our trees.  I also think lightning struck the bush out front because of the way it fanned out.

Please keep the other people in the area in your prayers....there were a lot of houses destroyed.

J took this from our garage right before the wind started hissing

bush out front that I believe was struck by lightning