Funnel Cakes & Funnel Clouds

Last weekend I went to Dallas to help my brother & sister in law move into their beautiful new home! (More to come on that trip later!) My parents were going and I decided to tag along to help, and of course squeeze in some Aunt Sarah time with two of my nieces. We had the craziest trip- starting with a minor fender bender in Madisonville when a Jeep rear ended us as we entered the city limits. Luckily we were pulling a trailer and he only damaged his own car.

This was funny because about 5 minutes before the accident I had felt like I needed to pray for safety during our trip, so I said a quick prayer and later realized I should be more specific with my prayers! I had asked God to keep us safe, then 5 minutes later we were pulled over after being hit! no one was injured, so we were technically safe! God is good!

We pulled over at Buc-ees to check for any damage, and while we were inside getting drinks the power went out and the entire store and parking lot was pitch dark!! Craziness!The next day as we were at Scott & Jess' new house the tornado sirens went off, but after checking the news we realized we were probably pretty safe. Whew!! Another disaster avoided!

Before leaving Dallas on Sunday we decided to stop at Jack in the Box to get some drinks and just as we pulled up to the pick up window Dad decided he wanted a funnel cake. So, we sat at the window a good 5 minutes waiting on the funnel cakes. Soon enough, we hit the road.

About an hour later we were driving south on I-45 when all of the sudden a cloud right before our eyes began moving towards the ground...in a spiral motion! Dad saw it about the time I did and he told me to grab my camera to get a picture, we were watching a tornado!

For about 2 minutes the cloud twisted and moved towards the ground, then raised back up into the sky and disappeared. Little did we know it had moved right across the path we were on, about 5 miles down the road! As we drove through the town of Rice, we saw the damage...golfball size hail everywhere, a school now missing it's roof, a de-railed train car on it's side, a football stadium in shreds, an 18 wheeler carrying a Caterpillar construction machine that had been picked up then tossed on it's side, landing on another small car! Here's a video of what we saw:

The 5 minutes we waited on our Jack in the Box funnel cakes kept us from being in the middle of that tornado! God is good, and He kept us safe!

A few minutes after we passed all that damage, it began to hail, and everyone began pulling off the road, we were sure another tornado would appear at any moment! We prayed again for safety, and scrambled for our phones to check the weather radar! After a quick look we decided it would be best to get the heck out of the storm, and we began moving again. We finally made it to Buc-ees where everyone inside was talking about the tornado. A few minutes later I'm pretty sure we hit a skunk, at this point we were just laughing and wondering what would happen next on our wild & crazy roadtrip!!

Moral of the story: Tornadoes are scary, but God is good! It was a once in a lifetime experience that I'm glad I lived to tell, but would be ok with never experiencing again! Also, there's no place like home!