Well, yesterday started out as a shipping day...lots of girls coming to work, lots of fun, lots to do. Sharing lunch together and polishing off the very last task before my summer vacation began. Technically, my vacation was supposed to start after the July long weekend, but an unexpected bathroom renovation that ended up being more complicated than originally planned, took away the first week of my vacation time. After the grout had dried and the fixtures were hooked up, I had one week of work to complete before shipping. Shipping of the calendar club and the regular club was supposed to be the only thing standing in my way of going camping and relaxing. It almost worked... We did get the kits pulled, invoiced and boxed. Kayla, Megan, Laressa and Kate went home. Andrea and I were the only ones left at the workshop when my cell phone rang. It was my Mother, and she was practically yelling into the phone to GET UNDER COVER!!!!! I went flying out the door and jumped into my truck, while Andrea calmly kept working on her computer. I was half way to the big farm shop when I realized that I should be putting Mike's Duramax into the shop, not the truck I was driving. If I only had time to save one - I was in the wrong one. I actually got down to the house, lept out of one and into the other and made it to the machinery shed in time. Opened up the huge overhead door in a panic and came face to face with a tractor and a baler. Right in the frickin way. This was the one frickin time in my life that I wished that I knew how to drive a tractor! It was parked kinda wonky, so that the baler and the tractor would both fit in under the overhead landing at the back of the shop. The frickin bale door was up in the air, even if I got the tractor started, I would have no idea how to lower the door and I could not fit in the machinery doorway alongside the tractor. There was plenty of room in the shop, but I couldn't get through the doorway because of the front wheel of the tractor being over-center. It was sooo weird. A huge baseball sized hail flew out of no where and smacked into the side of the truck. It sounded like a shot gun going off. Then there was nothing...nothing...nothing...then another baseball landed on the cement pad that the truck was parked on. It imploded, sending shards of ice flying into the machinery shed. I backed up. Nothing...nothing...nothing. Then all proverbial hell broke loose!! It was so loud in the building that I thought I would be deaf for the rest of my life. Pieces of the truck were breaking off and flying into the shed. I heard the horses going crazy between the shot gun blasts. Then the windshield, tail lights and all of the mouldings were flying. I was in direct vision of the workshop, but there was so much hail in the air, I could not see if Andrea had tried to drive away and make a break for it or if her van was still parked in the driveway' or if she had the same thought as me and might have tried to drive up under the 10 foot overhang of the workshop veranda. All I could do was wait. Then I saw my cell phone face light up - Megan was trying to call me. I answered, but I couldn't hear her or me screaming either, so I hung up. She texted me "Are you stuck in a metal building?" I was so scared that I didn't even text back that I was safe. It seemed like it lasted an eternity! When it was all done, I went over to Andrea to see how she had made out and a few minutes later, Mike pulled up with the truck that I left behind and sacrificed to try and save his good truck. As the photo shows, it didn't fair very well. We lost the fifth wheel trailer, stock trailer, two trucks, the exterior of our house, garage, woodworking shop, my workshop exterior, all of my planters and pots, the body of Mike's tractor that was in the field and our big master bedroom window. The brand new, two week old lawn tractor does not look too healthy either!! The biggest frickin' mess is my yard...I am so glad that I took pictures, just the day before the hail, of all of the flowers and the apples on the trees and all of the garden. They are not there anymore. Laressa and Kate came to help with the clean up today, but the insurance company asked us not to touch much until the adjuster gets here. So I got to look at all the destruction today and could not do a thing about it. I guess we are not going camping for the weekend (or ever again in that trailer)...I don't have to weed the garden anymore...somehow our crops are still standing and the horses got into the shed and out of the hail. No loss of life!!! However, my summer vacation is over before it started. I took these photos of the hail about an hour and a half after the hailstorm, they had melted significantly! We had to put the truck in four wheel drive to go and check on the crops, that is how hard it was to drive on those huge stones. One of them just fit in the palm of my hand and it was all sharp and spikey. I thank God that none of us got hit by one of those, however, Laressa is suffering today with a great big goose egg on her head and bruises all over her body, as she was trying to get horses under cover too. Goodbye yard, goodbye camping, goodbye summer vacation!
