The Damn Tornado took our home

We were one of the unfortunate victims of the Washington, IL Nov 17th tornado.  We were lucky enough not to be home when the tornado hit, but, not being home did not reduce the damage from the tornado.  As you can see from the pictures, the tornado took our entire house.  Our whole family survived including our two wonderful dogs, and so we are extremely thankful.  Don't get me wrong, there isn't a day that goes by that we don't curse that "DamnTornado", but we are happy to be alive and safe.   I can not begin to explain how wonderful it was the days following the tornado when so many of our friends and family came to help us try to recover the few belongings that were scattered around the yard.  

As you can see we had a few things laying around next to the dance floor that used to be our living room.  The new hardwood floors weathered the storm like a champ, I can't say as much for the rest of the house.

There wasn't much left to the back garage, just a pile of rubble.

My truck wasn't much help in cleaning things up, but it wasn't long before everyone that was helping had the truck dug out from the house rubble.

The next bit of fun was digging through this pile to find the keys to the truck.

By the end of that week, we found out the truck, camaro, pool, fence, garage and house were all totaled, it was time to start everything over.  Our entire world changed in one day.  This was the beginning of an adventure where we would learn a lot about cleaning up after a catastrophe, government aid, insurance, rebuilding and mostly patience.    

The Damntornado, took our house and left us a mess.