A little excitement...

We had an interesting day yesterday. We knew we were in for storms that could be severe but around 4 in the afternoon things got interesting. It started pouring rain and the kids and I stood on the front porch a few minutes to watch and then came back inside, turned and walked into the kitchen just in time to hear a HUGE boom of thunder simultaneous to a bright flash of orange in our front yard. Lightning had struck the tree in front of our house. Before we knew too much about what was going on we smelled smoke and I realized that the baseboard heater in our foyer area (which we never use and is not our main form of heating) had a small fire in it. There were flames and smoke but then they went out on their own after just a minute. Of course we checked all over the house but nothing else seemed to have flames. Nathan went out in the downpour to check if there were flames anywhere else, even crawling in the crawl space because the lightning seemed to have gone through the ground. To be safe, we called the fire department who said we'd done the right thing to call them and they sent someone over. So then we had a fire truck in front of our house, a police car came by to see what was going on and firemen went all around the house with a thermal detector checking for any hotspots or flames we couldn't see. Everything was good. It wasn't until the storm had let up some that we were able to see the lightning's effect on the tree. Bark was stripped off down a long section of the tree and there was a big hole in the ground next to the tree where the grass had been uprooted. Grass chunks and bark were all over the yard. This knocked out our phone lines, one TV, our modem, and (ARG!!) our electric fence. So we called the insurance company just to be sure we'd covered our bases and called the phone company who said they'd be out the next day and went on with our evening. The storms picked up again after dinner and by then both kids and the dog were extremely afraid. Luke and Toby wouldn't leave my side. The weather channel didn't have encouraging news. We got Luke to sleep but Chloe stayed snuggled with us on the couch because she was afraid. Around 9:30 the doorbell rang just as the sirens started going off. It was our neighbor who at least had a bi-level (we have no basement) and he said we could come over if we wanted to. We stayed at home a bit longer but seeing the crazy weather on the news and having already been struck by lightning that day, we decided to take him up on his offer. So we got Luke back up and headed over there. We stayed there for about an hour and then went home..right as the sirens started going off again. It poured all night and stormed again in the morning but that seems to be the worst of it. The phone company came this morning and got our phone lines working again, though one phone is fried and the modem had to be replaced. The TV is still dead as is the electric fence. But Nathan had his last day of work for the school year today so we'll hopefully get things back together quickly. We're supposed to get some more storms tonight so we'll see how things go.