Little Girls and Tornados

It's tornado season here on the high prairies, and as much as I might want to shield my little ones from fear and worries about natural disasters, there is just no hiding some things from them. Especially when their older brother, who is just this side of a storm chaser, hovers around the doppler radar page on the computer, talking about "funnel clouds" and "right conditions" and such. It's enough to make the stoutest little heart jittery.

Yesterday was particularly bad, I think, because it was such a dark stormy day here. While I was out, a friend spotted a funnel cloud to the north of our town (actually quite a ways north, as it turns out). So, I drafted out the procedure for our big boys to follow in case of a tornado threat, just as a precaution. And, of course the little girls overheard this. I did take some time (as it turns out maybe not enough) to calm their fears, though. Cathy was concerned about what we should do if there was a tornado in the night, and how would we know so we could run down to the cellar. I told her that Daddy and I are right here, but that she should pray to her Guardian Angel to wake her if there was an emergency and she could trust that she would be alright. This seemed to satisfy her and her sisters, and they went on up to bed a little later with nothing more said. My husband, the big brothers and I didn't think any more about it

Until...

About 9:30 or so, when we thought they were already asleep ~

Cathy (7 ~ our communicator) comes downstairs and tells us that

Theresa (9 ~ our worrier) has been up fretting and sketching out worst-case-scenarios, and

Anna (5 ~ our doer) has been packing up all her underpants...

"She's been doing what?" we all say, almost in unison.

"She's been packing up all her panties, because Theresa said if we had a tornado

we'd probably pee our pants."

That's our Anna. She wanted to be prepared in case of an emergency.

And that is our three little girls in a nutshell.

*PS* Just as I pushed the "Publish" button on this post, I got a call from my second oldest son, Kevin, who is heading back to Omaha this morning, where he lives and works. He wanted to make sure I knew that, as he spoke, he was watching a tornado descend from greenish clouds outside of Brush, Colorado ~ in a field adjacent to the highway on which he was driving. Wasn't that sweet of him to fill me in on that?

Actually, I'm glad he did, so that now I can ask everyone reading if they wouldn't mind saying a quick prayer to St. Christopher (his patron) to protect my boy not only from: problems with the old Saab he's driving, distraction, poor roads, low flying geese, and on-coming traffic... But also from tornados!

(Thanks, y'all!)