Birthdays, birthdays all around

Well, yesterday was Puckey's 2nd birthday. We celebrated it by going to my brother in law's mother's house to celebrate my niece's birthday (which is really today). While we were there, we realized that within the group of us (which numbered 19), there were 4 birthdays all within 7 days of each other, and each of the birthday girls have names that start with an "A". We had Anne (8/19), Abbey (8/20-something I can't remember the day), Asha (8/25), and Amelia (8/26) How weird/cool is that?

Other current events: A tornado touched down near my mom's house on Friday. Several homes in the area were damaged, but my mom's house escaped without a scratch. She is without power, though. Ande, the babies, and I got to test out the basement as a storm shelter for the first time. I decided we needed to get some chairs and toys down there for future occurances.

We get the occasional tornado here in MI, but it always seems weird to me. Several years ago, a tornado hit the manufacturing plant I was working for at the time. It was so bizarre, because Ande and I were running late for work. So we're cruising down the highway, listening to CD's and trying to get to work on time. I heard a weird sound (like a train whistle) and Ande commented that it was really windy. There was still traffic on the road, and we didn't see anything that unusual, so we just kept going. When we got to work, I first saw the party store located on the corner, and it's roof was GONE. At first, I thought they had had a fire, because there was a fire truck there. Then we pulled into the parking lot of the plant and I noticed that all of the trees between the plant and the party store were laying on the ground. A tornado had hit both our plant and the party store next to it!! Fortunately no one was injured, but there was a lot of damage to the buildings. We realized after the fact that we must have actually driven through the path of the tornado on the way to work, but since we didn't see a funnel cloud it didn't register at the time. WEIRD!!!

Oh, and I almost forgot - my sister was going to have my niece's birthday party at their house on the other side of the state, but they couldn't because there were severe storms in their area on Thursday that knocked out their power. So they came "home" to where our parents all live, and the storm hit and knocked out my mom's power. Fortunately my brother in law's mom still had power, or I might have ended up having all of those people over here!!