Thunder, Lightening, Tornadoes, and Baby Squirrels

Where do I even start?

Last night we, the volleyball team, was planning on going to St Louis for a relaxing night eating dinner at Bread Co. and picking up Tara Edwards from the airport. Well, lesson one that we learned was to not plan on taking a van that is already out on another trip. The van we were expecting took two hours and a half longer to get to Prin than we were told so by the time we left, we were already late.

We wanted to eat in the loop but it was a Friday night and time was tight so we decided to try and venture out to a Bread Co. nearby and of course, the road was blocked. Well, we decided to keep rolling with the punches and just eat at McDonald's as much as that idea killed me a little inside. Of course, that would have been too easy and they wouldn't take our tax exempt card. On to the next plan...Arby's. We finally ate and things were looking up until we pulled out of the parking lot and heard the tornado sirens going off. Getting a little flustered by what we should do, we ended up going the wrong way and had to turn around, finally getting to the airport.

As if that wasn't enough, there were tornado warnings close to campus and torrential rain and flash flood warnings as well that we would have to drive through. We waited for a bit but decided it didn't look too bad and it didn't...until we got to the river road. I could see the actual wall of rain and we had to slow down to 20 mph with thunder and lightening everywhere. Across the river I could see two clouds that looked suspiciously like tornadoes but I didn't want to admit it at the time. The freshmen were nervous while I was just trying to hide my nerves, unsuccessfully I think.

Well we finally got back to Prin, in the heaviest rain I have ever been in and got safe inside, thank you God.

To make things more interesting, the storm from yesterday afternoon had knocked three baby squirrels out of their nest and they had fallen to the ground, soaked and cold. Some girls on the team rescued them and I think that they have all been taken back by their poor mother after having put them back.

Phew, that makes me tired just thinking about the craziness of last night. Fortunately we learned that our team can have fun whatever they are doing. No one complained or got frustrated, we kept laughing even through the storm, although I think that those laughs were more to keep me from crying than for a genuine silly feeling.