Heartbreaking Devestation

It's been a few days, again, since I last updated. A lot has been going on here at home, as Benjamin and Isabella turned 3 years old on Friday. I have so many pictures and so much prepared that I was supposed to write and post tonight, but those happy posts will have to be posted another day.

Tonight, I am not in the mood for happy birthday pictures. I'm sad, heartbroken and can only watch the news with tears rolling down my face. Over and over again, hoping to hear some miraculous news of survivors.

 

Moore, Oklahoma, the news have reached the world by now, and it's so tragic and so horrific what nature sometimes has to offer. Unfortunately, Oklahoma has seen this before, many times, and every year when the tornado season starts, the sirens keep ringing in Oklahoma.

"The Tornado Belt". Americas Midwest. Known to have the weather that keeps bringing the tornadoes like clockwork, every year...

So they did in Kansas, where we lived for three years. I was horrified every time the sirens went off. The tornado sirens, that loudly called out the warnings, night as day. We had programmed our phones so the weather channels would call us with warnings in case we would not hear the sirens. There is often no time to play around, when the siren rings, it's time to take shelter. Go to the basement or the "safe spot" in your house. We were lucky to have a basement, we had a battery operated radio, water bottles, flashlights, blankets, pillows, clothes, first aid kits and later when the babies were born, diapers and wipes. Already put to the side in the basement, just in case. Normally, there were plenty of warnings that the storm was coming. That the weather would build up thunder, rain and storm. That the risk of tornadoes would increase...

Those days, I had the TV on 24/7 to hear the newest updates, to see how the storm clouds were moving, in what direction they were heading. Mostly also because Chris often was out and about driving around in the open country side as a recruiter at the time. He didn't have the time and info as I had from the weather channels, so I kept him updated and to keep my own mind from going crazy, I needed to know where he was, if he was safe and if he was out of danger.

A few times, it got bad. Hutchinson, KS, was never really hit during our time there, not like  you see on TV, but we were lucky. Touchdowns were seen in the outskirts of town all the time. We just were so lucky to never have a touchdown in town. Many times, the wind would be so strong, that you were keeping an eye to the sky at all times. A few times, the rain and hail would be so strong, that you couldn't see anything. It would be golfball sized hail coming down, pouring down, like someone had emptied hundreds, thousands of big bags of balls, they were popping around on the streets.

A few times, the size were measured up to softball sized hail. I heard from Oklahoma, that people had measured grapefruit sized hail. The damage those sized hail will bring is not hard to imagine..

Many times, I took the kids down to the basement, when the storm hit, when the sirens started to ring. We were always lucky, we never had to experience the devastation and destruction of a tornado touchdown during the time we lived in Kansas.

But we have seen enough from all around us during these three years in the news after each storm system had passed. Enough to be more than thankful. We've seen devastation and horror pictures in the news, like most of the world, and it felt even worse, as it was so close to home.

Always when things like this happen, I can't help myself but thinking what if? What if Moore, Oklahoma would have been Hutchinson, Kansas? What if Plaza Towers Elementary School would have been Graber Elementary School? What if it would have happened while Cassie was in school, just like it happened in Moore, in Plaza Towers Elementary School...It could have been! Nobody could have prevented it if the winds were blowing our way. If the storm was heading toward us, if the tornadoes would have picked up strength instead of normally die down closer to town. It could have been...

 

Credit: KFOR via CNN

A desperate search continued Monday evening at the Plaza Towers Elementary School in Moore, Oklahoma, which was leveled by a massive tornado on May 20, 2013.

I can't even go there with my thoughts without starting to shiver. So many children are still tonight unaccounted for. Parents are trying to get news from the rescuers if they have found any more survivors. Just before, I heard on the news, that they were sending people away from the scene that wanted to help. Officials said they are no longer working a search and rescue effort but now a recovery mission at the a Moore elementary school where children and teachers took shelter Monday.
They don’t believe there are anymore survivors in the Plaza Towers Elementary school.
So far the bodies of seven children have been recovered. Crews said they believe 20 to 30 more children may be inside but again, do not believe there are anymore survivors.

I just cry. Hope is everything these people/these parents have right now, please don't say things like this! It's beyond horrifying anyway, let them keep the hope until every stone is turned in that rubble from the building! To be a parent having a child that still is missing, to be standing there crying to help, and to be turned away. To be told that it's now a "recovery mission" and not a "rescue mission" and therefore no extra help needed. The dogs are searching through the rubble trying to pick up any scents.

The National Weather Service said the tornado was on the ground for nearly 40 minutes, with the first tornado warning coming 16 minutes before it touched down. The preliminary damage rating on the enhanced fujita scale was EF4 -- the second most-powerful type of twister -- and carved a 20-mile path through Newcastle, Moore and South Oklahoma City.

"This may be worse than the May 3rd, 1999 tornado."
The strongest winds on earth -- 302 mph -- were recorded near Moore that year.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/weather/2013/05/21/children-among-dead-after-twister-strikes-near-oklahoma-city/#ixzz2TtyahgGO

I came across this site, and I think this weather channel/news channel did an outstanding job following and updating this monster storm. Just look at the storm and read the comments/statements that were made, around 9 hours ago now, just before the tornado hit Moore.

Residents of Moore, Oklahoma are being urged to get below ground level. Massive tornado headed for the heart of the city !

 

 A couple of minutes later, this statement:

Massive tornado moving across SW Moore, OK. Homes are reported being lofted into the air. Debris is falling from the sky nearly a mile ahead of the storm . A TORNADO EMERGENCY has been issued for the city.

Then, not long after the last entry, this one was issued:

Violent tornado is now on the east side of Moore. Doppler Radar indicates wind speeds in excess of 200 mph. Catastrophic damage has been observed across much of Moore, Oklahoma. Storm is now pushing into SE Oklahoma City.

I have watched these radar pictures so many times online, on TV and watched the directions of the winds. Been scared to pieces every time the beep-beep-beep-beep on the TV comes on, a high pitch signal that warns you of the dangers. Often, it stayed with Tornado watch. But sometimes, it became Tornado warnings. Luckily, we never had to hear the words...Tornado Emergency. 

On Sunday afternoon, it hit close to where we lived in Kansas. Wichita, just an hour away from our home in Hutchinson. Wichita, where Chris worked and where he traveled on those wide open roads where the tornadoes picked up on speed before it hit towns and buildings. Wichita, three hours north of Oklahoma City...

In Wichita, Kansas, a tornado touched down near Mid-Content Airport on the city's southwest side shortly before 4 p.m., knocking out power to thousands of homes and businesses but bypassing the most populated areas of Kansas' biggest city. The Wichita tornado was an EF1 -- the strength of tornado on the enhanced Fujita scale -- with winds of 110 mph, according to the weather service.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/weather/2013/05/21/children-among-dead-after-twister-strikes-near-oklahoma-city/#ixzz2TtyTkBs6

The tornado season has just begun, and it certainly has already now caused more death and damage than you ever want to hear about during a tornado season. What still is unclear to me though, is if the school had a basement, a safety room? I'm so glad that my daughter had that in her school in Hutchinson, Kansas. They had tornado drills very often, and it was calming to know, that the safety precautions were taken and that they hoped for the best, but prepared for the worst. 

I will, like so many of us, continue to hope and pray that there still will be some miracles tonight. That some parents will get the news that their children are still alive...

One Year Ago...

Today, it's exactly one year ago since we arrived in Yuma. Then, we were over joyed that the traveling was coming to an end, finally being in our new hometown. A town that we never even had been too before. A town, a state, that we never even had visited before. Now we were here. So tired, but still so excited and with a tingling all over of good expectations. Our lives were finally going to take a turn for the better. Or so we thought...
For you who are new to the blog or don't know our story too good, we arrived to Yuma, Arizona, after three years of living in Kansas. In the middle of Midwest, in a small town not of our choice but by USMC choice. My husband was sent there on recruiting duty for the Marine Corps, and it wasn't an option to say no. You go where they tell you to go.

We didn't know then, that we during these three years hardly ever would see each other. Most people had warned us. "Don't do it, don't go on recruiting duty." "It'll destroy your marriage." "You'll end up getting a divorce." Oh yeah, we heard it all. We also had seen the statistics. Many marriages do split up during these trying years, where you  never get to spend time together. I think that I read one of the statistics that had one out of three marriages would make it through the three years of recruiting duty..Not very promising, but makes you understand that it'll be hard. And so it was. We even have close friends that ended up in divorce during their recruiting duty. And I believe two or three of the Marines that Chris was working with - got a divorce during, or just after ending the recruiting duty.

My husband was never home. He left early in the morning, after 6am and was 6 out of 7 nights a week not home before 10pm or sometimes even later. That was six days a week. But, at least one of four Sundays in a months, he had to take his "poolies" to the depot where the guys that were shipped to boot camp were leaving from. That was in Oklahoma City, which was about 5 hours of a drive from where we lived. You do the math. 5 hours to drive there, spend some time there getting them settled, paperwork etc etc and then 5 hours back. All day and more gone. So for most parts, he was home three days in a month. Not much time to keep a family running.

To make matters "more complicated", I got pregnant - with twins. We had tried for a while to get pregnant, and were hoping that it would work, and I knew and we had talked about the seriousness about that "You do realize that I won't be home much right while on recruiting?" You do realize that I won't be able to help as much as I'd like when I hardly ever is home? Ofcourse I knew, and still it was hard. Adding to the joy and to the extra work with being pregnant it turned out that I was expecting twins. Not really what we had imagined, but ofcourse so welcomed, even if it was a difficult pregnancy. Difficult when you don't have the help and support from your husband that you need all the time. He was hardly ever there.

When the babies were born, he was there. Barely. He worked during the days and came to see me in the hospital in the evenings. My mom was there, so I wasn't alone all the time with the twins, but still. There is a lot going on, you need to concentrate on breastfeeding and everything else around the twins, and you don't get much sleep. When the babies and I came home, he was home over the weekend. Then he went straight back to work. As my mother was there for a visit, we figured that he better save the 20 days of paternity leave that he has the right to take, until my mom was gone and I needed more help. Well, it turned out that the 20 days HAD to be taken immidiatly and couldn't be saved.

So I was alone. Alone with the twins day, evening and most of the nights. The few hours that he was home, he needed to sleep. Sure, he got up and helped here and there, but as I was fully breast feeding both and none of them took the bottle, there wasn't much he could do anyway, so I handled it. My kids never slept through the night. It took until this fall, until they finally slept through the night more than once in a very rare while. They are now 2 1/2 years old...

To sleep when the child is sleeping didn't work for me with having twins. And when you never get to sleep, you are never rested, you are exhausted and tired and most likely not the most fun and loving person to be around.

My routine would look like this: Nurse one, burp and settle the first one to sleep = about an hour the first couple of months.

They both had problems with the reflux and had problems keeping the milk in They threw up a lot, and were unsettled and needed to be nursed again...over and over again. Then when that hour was over, it was time to feed the second one, same procedure, sometimes that one was waiting impatiently next to me in the bed/sofa and I felt stressed with finishing up with the first one to get started on the second one. Before the second one was changed, nursed, burped, nursed again and settled to sleep = about an hour was gone again.

That gave me about one hour to eat, take a shower, get ANYTHING done in the house like cooking/cleaning/laundry etc etc, before the first one was awake and hungry again. They were eating about every three hours. If I didn't quickly pick him/her up when they woke up and cried he/she would wake up the other one, and the circus with having both crying would start.

It was hardly any time for me to sleep, and I was constantly exhausted. My husband wasn't there at 5 or 6pm to "take over" for a couple of hours. Not sleeping during the days, not sleeping during the nights, if I got four hours during a night, that was a lot, as those hours never were in one stretch either. The kids always woke each other up, and it was a constant carrying around, burping and so forth...It got a bit better when they got a bit older and I could double nurse them, at the same time, without having them through up too much and getting settled easier.

But it was a very hard first year. The second year was trying in another way, but then the worries about the move started to settle in, we didn't know when or where we were going until the start of the summer. Then it wasn't even to the choice where we had chosen to go. We wanted to go to Camp Pendelton in California. That's were we were heading, or so we thought, now we ended up in Yuma, Arizona. Not exactly satisfying.

Still, the houses were great on base, I looked forward to the fact of living on base. The community. Having close to the gym, childcare, schools, community pools etc etc. All over there are playgrounds, there are families in the same situation next door, kids in all ages all over the place, it surly would be easier for all of us to find friends and get settled in if we finally were able to live on base. There were so many good things about it, and I couldn't wait. Hopefully be able to find friends, for Cassie, but also for us, for me.

When we drove into Yuma, one year ago tonight, and checked into the hotel for the night, we were filled with hope of a better life to come. A better new beginning for all of us. We had been through so much struggles over the last years, that we felt that finally, we can live more normal, live a family life again. We had planned to visit the housing office the following day to get to see some houses, to see when we could move in - especially considering that it was close to Christmas and all. We were eager to get the house unpacked, get decorated, being settled before my husband had to start work around the 15th of December. Be ready for Christmas.

Things didn't exactly turn out that way, not at all the way I had hoped for, or dreamed of. This would be a too long entry to continue, so I think that I'll have to continue this entry with a "part 2" another day.

Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz

Ben was happily awake...

 ...while his sisters took a power nap.

Just before we'd leave Kansas behind us, we made sure to pass Liberal, KS. Only for one reason, to visit the Museum with the The Wizard of Oz. What a waste of time!!! First the extra drive there, then when we got there in supercold weather and strong winds, it was closed!!! I had extra looked online and it was supposed to be open until 6pm, and yes it was almost 5.15pm when we got there, but still, we would have had time to go through it and at least get something out of the trip there. But no, closed earlier today was a sign that met us on the door. Do I need to even mention that we were kind of upset about that...

Dorothy's House

 

It is kind of funny as I had never actually read the book or seen the movie, but when me and Cassie were in Sweden visiting my brother and family back in 2008, we went to see a play of this in Linkoping with him and his daughters. We really liked it and Cassie kept singing the song "vi tar den gula vagen till trollkarlen fran Oz" "we follow the yellow brick road", a long time after that..

Anyway, we then joked about that what if we would end up in Kansas. We were just about to move later that fall and in summer we still didn't know to where. Faith would have it that we did end up in Kansas after all! So we didn't get to meet Dorothy, Toto, Tin man or the Lion and we didn't even get to try out any red slippers....

My little munchkin's were NOT happy about that they were closed..

Dodge City, KS

Our first stop of our trip was in Dodge City, KS. As I mentioned earlier, this is where we were supposed to be stationed, and only the weeks before moving it changed to Hutchinson instead. I was very happy about that at the time, as everything that I could find on the internet about the town, schools, living standards and safety was plain scary. This was not the place that I wanted to live in. And also out in the middle of nowhere.. no I was very happy to end up in Hutchinson instead.

Dodge City is also very well known for the history of the Wild West. As we both find history very interesting, we wanted to take as much as possible in when we anyway were there, and we wanted to learn and see what we could. We drove around in town a little bit just to look around and down town there was many things that made you realize that you now were in the Wild West.

 One of many "western inspired" street names. There is no question about where we are..

"My trails have become your highways"

We drove up to the famous Boot Hill Cemetery Site, to learn some of the history there. It was very cold and we just took quick stop to take a few photos.

We  headed to the Boot Hill Museum instead.

They loved the ride!

The museum itself is actually built as the old front street of town with everything as original looking as possible. Many things were also preserved and stored in the museum. It was very nice, and we looked around in the different stores and were taken back to a different time era. Now it wasn't really tourist season, so there were no shows or other things going on, but there were some people working and more than willing to tell us about things. It would be recommended to go there to visit in summer or at least when it's not so cold! The wind was biting and we didn't really dress for much outdoor activities as we were going to be on the road, but still, it was well worth a stop. 

Fashion! Check out that waist - not much wider than the models neck...

 Anyone shopping for a baby stroller??

 Now we know - the gunfights didn't actually happen the way they do in movies...

In connection with the Boot Hill Museum, they also had a part of the "Plain Indians". Very interesting and very nicely made. Great for the kids to walk around and there were very interesting sound effects and movie clips for educational purpose. Very nice and I know that Cassandra found it just as interesting as we did.

Interesting and sad history...

Cassie watching the program about the end of the wild buffalo.

 

Many graves didn't even have a name but called "Unknown cowboy.."

We could have spent much more time in the museums, but we really had to get on the road, as we still had one more stop to go to before it got too late the same afternoon.