We are okay

Several of you have expressed concern on here and my phone nearly blew up yesterday with people asking if we were okay.

Short answer is yes. Long answer is I feel shaken to the core. I feel sad for so many around me who have lost everything. Their pets, their homes, their lives. I question "what if" about alot of choices from yesterday.

What if I'd decided to stay at our house so our kids could take afternoon naps like usual? What if I had chosen to leave the clinic for "better shelter" and put myself more in line of the storm? What if it took its original path and hit our clinic?

I went to our vet clinic 7 miles from our house at 1:30 yesterday. At 3, my phone started erupting with warning texts, many from numbers I didn't even know. Everyone urging us to seek shelter immediately. We luckily have a TV at the clinic and started watching as a giant tornado formed mere miles from us.

We had twelve minutes. What is difficult though is most places here don't have basements and not many people have shelters large enough to accommodate us and our two kids and our three employees and our clients who were trapped with us.

So we considered driving away in our cars. You may have seen what happened to people's cars on our main highway by my house. It mangled them beyond recognition. We thought of going to a school. Three were destroyed around us yesterday. And they just kept repeating that people above ground would not survive.

Luckily it missed us at the clinic where we watched the tornado clearly destroying everything to the south of us. We could see its massive shape and feel its ominous presence. If you've never been in a tornado, there is a distinctive calmness in the air and it gives you chills.

This felt just like the May 3rd tornado that hit within a mile of my home. And took 40 lives and thousands of homes. It's one that Oklahomans still talk about frequently. And this one was worse.

My mom saw it looming over her as she frantically raced to our clinic and out of its path. She made it to us in time. What if she'd left a minute later and been trapped in her car with all the others fleeing our area? I can't even think about it.

None of our phones worked well all day yesterday so I was unable to let our friends and family know that we were okay. Every once in a while I would get 50 texts from people worried, but it wouldn't allow me to respond by text or call. Our clinic phones were ringing but we couldn't hear anything when we'd pick up.

We didn't know about our house until late last night. Aaron left pretty quickly after it hit to survey the damage but had to walk about 4 miles on foot through enormous amounts of debris. Roads were littered like a landfill. Dead horses lay in pastures and even roads.

Our house is miraculously okay. Yeah it's a mess. But it has a roof and four walls and is okay. Our pets survived. Which is also incredible considering that they were outside. I left them OUTSIDE. It was a beautiful afternoon with a 30% chance of showers. We have a large patio for shelter. They wouldn't have survived inside anyways, but I bet they were terrified.

My Mom's house is also okay. She rode into the neighborhood in the bed of a military vehicle and saw everything around us destroyed. (She lives down the street from us).

I stayed at the clinic and triaged a few animals that were brought in and accepted some boarding animals from people who no longer have homes. We have a cat who was found underneath a large beam. He was wet and covered in mud but alive. Aaron helped me treat him over the phone as he walked to our house.

We have no electricity and no means of getting to our house. The tornado destroyed everything on the other side of OUR neighborhood. Less than a half mile from our house. It went between our home and clinic. Our neighboring businesses and schools and houses are GONE. We had many friends welcome us to their homes and I am lying here now with my family as they sleep at our best friends' house in Edmond.

My heart hurts. This morning seems so much more REAL. I fear all that I will see when we return home. Aaron and my mom have warned me how bad it truly is in person. What if we had lost everything???

The picture was taken by one of our neighbors before he went into his shelter.