When Independence Day meets Twister....

It all started with cookies. All Jenni wanted to do was make a nice batch of chocolate chip cookies (with Ghirardelli chips of course). As she was mixing up the dough, she realized that we did not have any cooling racks, this is something that has been occurring frequently, not the cookies but the realizing we don't have something we need. As Jenni said during one of our many Target adventures, "we won't know what we need until we need it!" These fine words of wisdom were definitely true, and are the beginning of our 4th of July adventures...

So there we were, anticipating the creation of these delicious cookies, when Brad offered to run to Target to grab some cooling racks. As the cookies were baking, the Brad was shopping. When all of a sudden, we hear it, Jenni from the kitchen, and Brad from the car...TORNADO SIRENS!!! At first Jenni didn't know what it was, she thought maybe it was coming from the episode of House Hunters International she was watching while baking. Upon walking to the screen door, she realized that in fact this siren was real, and was in Fargo and not from whichever glorious destination was being featured on that nights episode. She walked out onto the deck to look around (probably not the wisest move) to see if she could see Brad coming home with the cookie sheets. The sirens kept blaring, and in a fit of OH MY GOD TORNADO panic, Jenni could think of nothing else to do to protect our humble home but turn over the $6 plastic chairs we just bought from Manards that day, and lean them against the wall of the building. After ensuring the chairs were safe, Jenni went back inside and waited for Brad to get home.

Within minutes he came rushing in, after slicing his finger on said cooling racks in his haste to get back inside. We turned the channel to a local station which showed radar maps of the ominous storm looming 25 minutes away in our future. Jenni began pacing, clutching Eeyore, while Brad made a phone call to Rod in Oklahoma, who has now become a seasoned tornado veteran, to ask for advice on what we should do. Rod took a look at the weather channel, and said that he didn't think we'd have anything to worry about. This helped a bit, but Jenni was still running around the apartment like a headless chicken in panic.

About 15 minutes later, the weather channel extended the tornado watch to a tornado warning, since they had received reports that a tornado had in fact been sighted just West of Fargo. At this point, we decided we should probably find a place to shelter, and then Rod called us back with confirmation, that yes we should think about taking shelter somewhere. So we grabbed our wind-up radio, Eeyore, and some water...oh yeah and the camera too. How could we miss such an opportunity for pictures for this blog!?!?!


So there we were, spending our first 4th of July sitting in the hallway of the first floor of our building, apparently the safest spot for us during these situations. We were listening to the radio which was saying we should stay sheltered until 10:30, it was 10:15 at this point, so we had a photoshoot of course :) Jenni took the first shot of Brad, who upon inspecting the picture, insisted that Jenni fix the white balance! Only he would be thinking of proper white balance settings during a tornado sheltering photoshoot! So we fixed the white balance to Brad's liking, and continued with the shoot....

10:30 soon rolled around, and we were officially able to say that we survived our first tornado warning. Needless to say the local fireworks were cancelled due to the storm, but we were able to catch an amazing lightning show through our bedroom window! Happy 4th of July :)