An Unforgettable Birthday

Last week when I blogged about going to his game I didn't tell you that my precious nephew Daniel celebrated his 6th birthday on April 22nd!

I still feel like he should be this age...

This child has had all this thick hair since he was a tiny baby!

The Ben 10 cake.

Mia and Patrick were all smiles meeting for the first time.

Look at these adorable cotton-top twin girls.

Now let me tell you a little bit about why this particular birthday is so unforgettable. Since Daniel's birthday is in the middle of the week his party was planned for Saturday the 24th.

There happened to be a severe line of storms blowing through the southeast. The day was off to a messy start, the rain was pouring down. The kids didn't seem to mind. They were having a great time playing in the gym.

About 45 minutes into the party someone calls to let us know a tornado has been reported about 25 minutes from us coming in our direction. We decide to line all the kids up and go into the next building in the hallway.

Everyone was trying to keep calm and not scare the kids. Cell phones were blowing up with calls and text messages.

The kids found another room which happened to have a bucket of toys.

Stevie was the oldest child there and you can see from her expression she was pretty distraught over the situation. Just last year she began to panic over bad weather.

Next we got a call that tornadic activity was reported around Demopolis Airport. This was only about 10 minutes from our location. From there we moved everyone into the building's "safe place", the men's restroom. Thankfully it was a clean one!

Crazy? Yes! All the adults continued to pray silently for safety. I really don't know that we could have heard the storm if it came right over us with all the kiddos we had packed in there just chatting and playing. I decided to keep snapping iPhone pics to document all the events of this party :)

About 20 minutes later we got the news we were clear to come out and we resumed our party festivities. Cake time!!

The "cheeeeeeeeezzzzzzzz" smile you get from Daniel. Don't think you can tell him "look at me and smile" without getting this fake grin.

Gift Time

The crowd cleared out after gifts to get home before the next band of storms hit.

During clean up I tried to get a cute pic of the cousins but that isn't always an easy job.

Back at Kendall and Trey's after the party I got a couple of grins from this sweet girl.

Later my parents and I rode to see the storm damage at the city landing we had heard everyone talking about.

It was later confirmed that the damage was caused by straight-line winds, not an actual tornado. Several trucks and trailers were damaged in this parking lot while parked there for a fishing tournament. Windows were blown out and trailers ended on top of a couple of trucks. I know what you are thinking because I thought the same too, why were these people out fishing in this weather anyway??

Lots of trees were snapped into and limbs ended up everywhere. Sorry for the bad pics, once again I was using my phone from the backseat of the truck.

Thankfully our town only suffered this small amount of damage as so many places throughout Mississippi had devastating damage and lives lost that day.