Tornado!

We survived our first tornado!
We were driving home from the airport and all of a sudden we see HUGE dark clouds covering Topeka. I said to Zach "Don't you ever get worried about Tornado's here?" He said he wasn't worried. I told him that every time I see dark clouds I immediately search for a tornado, I'm seriously terrified of them!
So we keep driving and we get to the end of the toll road where we have to pay, and in the window is a sign that says "Don't worry about paying, the employees have all gone for cover from the storm." Zachs' like "SWEET, we don't have to pay!" I'm like "WHAT...STORM!!!!" We turn on the radio and sure enough there was a Tornado heading straight into Topeka. We kept driving on the freeway and it started to hail so bad I thought our windshield would break (it did for others that day). So we pulled off the freeway and tried to get under the overpass to protect our car from the damaging hail. It was totally packed so we drove up on the gravel to get under. (By the way, we've now learned this is the worst place to be in a tornado, just so you know.)
As we sat there with all the other cars we listened to the radio as it said "If you are in Topeka you need to get into a Tornado shelter now. This is an extremely large funnel cloud heading straight through Topeka. If you are on the freeway you need to get into a shelter now." The sirens were all going off...that was scary enough to hear. We listened as the radio told us exactly where it was heading over. I was panicked! I thought...are we all going to die here in the car? Is the freeway going to collapse on us? Are we going to get sucked out and blow away in the tornado? PANICKED thoughts! I was shaking! We heard where the funnel cloud was...downtown Topeka, so it had just passed us. Zach thought we'd be better off taking our chances and trying to make it home so he speed down the flooded empty road to our house. We had a perfect view of the funnel cloud dipping down. It was scary! We made it home and rushed downstairs into the basement and turned on the TV. The funnel cloud touched down 20 minutes away on Lake Perry. Whew, we were safe..but there were tons of different tornado watches surrounding Topeka. So we stayed up for quite a while watching the weather channel. We actually watched the Redding KS tornado touch down live on TV (that one was like 40 miles from us). Then the next day we heard about the devastating Joplin tornado that hit the next day. It's so so sad. It's only 3 hours from us. I feel so blessed to have been spared. It could have been us.
Of course all this stuff has to happen when we are living here...OF COURSE! This is a picture of downtown Topeka, it's what we saw from a distance. I didn't have time to take a picture of it because we were so freaked out, but I got this off this website http://visittopeka.us/blog/.

Also, one more reason I'm terrified of Kansas. Spiders are EVERYWHERE!I HATE HATE HATE spiders with a passion. I really and truly have arachnophobia. We found this spider in a bucket I was moving things out of. AND just 1 hr ago there was another monster running across the carpet. Wyatt said "Spider, Spider", I looked at where he was pointing and sure enough there it was. He was trying to get close to see it and I was screaming my high pitched spider scream, while Wyatt was laughing and copying me.
It's so hot and humid here in Kansas. The last few days have been 102! It's 98 degrees even in the shade! There are TONS and TONS of trees and it's super green which I love! It's not at all what I pictured Kansas being like, which is a good thing ;) I think with all the humidity and greenery there are more bugs and spiders. In turn there are TONS of birds. I love that. Even when I get up to go spinning at 5am in the dark, the birds are all chirping and it sounds like I'm in the jungle. I love it.

Although we love living in Kansas...our faces pretty much sum up how we feel about it sometimes.