Tornado Season

We have experienced a busy tornado season.  Mid May tornadoes hit Cleburne and Granbury.  We quickly found a church to partner with us (us meaning Mercy Chefs) in Granbury.  My hubby took the trailer and dropped it off in Granbury, and then we went to get the food.  He is in the truck with me following behind.

First food delivery in Granbury, and already the paparazzi found us...

Here is my hubby making fresh bread...

Wonderful volunteers from our church prepping chicken...

All set up at First Assembly...

Leaving town one night, what gorgeous views!

The day we left Granbury, more tornadoes hit multiple towns in Oklahoma.  This time we dropped the Mercy Chefs trailer off in North Ft Worth for the driver to take to Oklahoma.

Such a strange night...I wondered if we would have storms, too.

My hubby was able to spend much more time in Oklahoma than I did-they set up at Southgate Baptist Church in Moore.  I arrived after they had been there over a week.  When I got there it was just in time for dinner service.

They had been serving 3000 people per meal each day, but by the time I got there the need was lesser.  Because of the immediate need, 2 Mercy Chefs trailers were working in tandem to produce enough food.  This picture was taken standing in front of one trailer; the other was to the left, and to the right is a refrigerator truck Sysco had donated the use us for the course of this disaster.  And in the middle, the preparation tent.

 I sent my son off with my camera to take a few pictures.  This is part of the church building.

Debris was everywhere.

 To serve meals, we plated up food in the trailer, and passed it through this window.

Here are a few of us plating up some food.

Once outside, the food was loaded onto Kubota's, and driven into the disaster areas for delivery.

 Part of the clean up process...

The tornado dropped this trailer off on the church property.  I believe someone told me it was from across town.

 Storage in the back of the Sysco truck...

More destruction...

Another view of the set up...

Preparing the cinnamon rolls to rise...

Southgate Baptist Church had a huge gym full of donations.  They had water lining the driveway to direct traffic through.

A pile of donations...

After that evening of work, we drove into Oklahoma City for our hotel.  Even in that town, there were many stoplights that were crooked like this one.

This was a normal scene...

In Oklahoma City, there were many buildings without power.  It was kind of eery to drive through a city passing so many buildings with no lights on.

This is our hotel...thankfully the damage was limited to the outside of the building.

Back to work the next day...

I snapped a few pictures on my way to the grocery store.

Since the city had not yet deemed the church safe, church services were held under this pavilion towards the very back of the picture.

Since the number of people being fed has gone down, and our trailer got some damage to it, we loaded it up to take it home.  The other trailer will be in Moore for a month to continue feeding.

I handed my son my camera as we were leaving town.  The tornado that hit town after the initial tornado must have taken some of these letters away.

I don't believe I have ever seen this type of devastation before.  It was just so incredibly widespread-so many people lost their homes.  The town of Moore, and the other towns that were affected, will never be the same.  I am so grateful for the time I was able to serve.

Port Aransas

After a very busy past month-Mercy Chefs deployments to West, Granbury, and Moore, we were more than ready for a vacation.  We have been planning this one for a couple months.

We started off by getting stuck in the mud the night before our trip.  We had to call our son to bring the truck to pull us out of this mess.  Looking back, it was a good memory.  At the time I was a little freaked out!

Jeep now unstuck, we left Friday morning to head to the coast.  We made the call to ride with the top down.  I had checked the forecast for both home and Port Aransas, and neither had rain in the forecast.  What I failed to check was the forecast for the area between our departure and destination locations.  We soon drove into a rain storm and had to pull over and put the top up.  We had to re-arrange some of the stuff in the trailer, but we made due, and continued on towards the coast.

As we got closer, we stopped to get our food for the weekend, and then spotted a little local fish market.  They had actually just closed, but they let my hubby in long enough to get some fresh shrimp.

And then we headed for the island...I love my first sight of the water!

What I didn't know until we got there was that we actually got to cross a ferry to get to Port Aransas.

Our campsite was quite literally a walk from the beach.  What a great view!

Lots of seaweed this time of year, but I can easily overlook it and just focus on the sand and the waves.

Huge, sandy beaches!  Just gorgeous!  The beaches here are much larger than those in Galveston.

We drove down the "road" along the beach, which was actually just firmly packed sand, and this seagull flew along with us for a while.

How neat to drive along the beach for miles!  We drove all the way to Corpus Christi, with this amazing view.

Of course, the beach is much more than views-we had plenty of time to play, too.

And then we cleaned up and did a little sight-seeing.

Since there was no Wal-Mart on the island we did have to leave at some point on the vacation to get some supplies-on the ferry again.

A friend of mine that lives in the area told me about the dolphins that swim near the Station Street fishing pier, so of course we made our way there to find the dolphins.

Sure enough, lots of dolphins showed up!

That night my hubby hooked up a projector outside and put a shower curtain on the side of the RV so we could watch a couple movies-so relaxing!

And then-another beautiful day at the beach!  

We went back out to see the dolphins, and while there we noticed a lighthouse in the distance.  I said I wanted a closer look, so we inputted lighthouse in Port Aransas into the GPS.  We were in the Jeep quite a while until it took us here-a lighthouse restaurant in Rockport...how funny!  IN a non-vacation world I probably would have been irritated, but in vacation land-I kind of enjoyed the ride!

We tried again-we headed back to Aransas Pass, and got about this close to it-it appeared to be on an island pretty far out.  I guess next time I want to see a lighthouse I should wait until we have a boat.

That night we decided it was time for a date!  We went out to a restaurant on the island called Shells.  I had one of my favorite seafood dishes-a crabcake and shrimp.  My food was tasty, but we were not impressed with the restaurant.  If we ever make a trip back to Port Aransas, this restaurant will not be on our list of restaurants to try.

After dinner, we decided to go out for ice cream.  We stopped at a little place called Desserted Island.  This was such a neat little place-very colorful and cheery with neat little decorations all over.  There was a long line, but it was worth the wait.

We had such a great vacation, but they all must come to an end at some point.  We stopped at a beach shop on the way out of town.  This particular one had a great photo-op!

It seemed like everyone decided to leave the same time we did, and we had quite a wait to get on the ferry again.  We did enjoy the view while we waited, though.

One last look at the water before heading out...

We passed this port on the way out of town, but I cannot recall if it was in Aransas Pass or Corpus Christi.

We had such a relaxing time-it was so nice to have no agenda, and to just be beach bums for a few days.  I am already looking forward to my next vacation.