Storm!

Heath is away in South Africa and I have been working in the mornings and then fetching the boys from school around 3pm and then spending the afternoon with them. I must say it has been great to spend the afternoons with the boys but it has been hectic as well. As it is only around the last two weeks at school before school holidays - both schools seem to be having various activities in preparation for the holidays.

It started with Bryce having a teddy bears picnic at kindy and just to make matters worse his teddy bears are still packed in boxes in South Africa - just a little too far away to quickly go and fetch. We had a fluffy monkey that looks like a confused teddy that Reece has won previously so we convinced him to take this instead - thank goodness he was convinced! Whew....

On Tuesday Reece had a pirate party at school and they all had to dress up so Reece was a bit concerned as we did not have any pirate goodies that he could dress up in so we had to go shopping..... on Monday after school.

Now Perth has not had rain for quite a few months but this Monday afternoon we looked like we may just get some rain. We have a really great shopping centre down the road from us but with the boys it can sometimes be a bit hectic as they just want to buy everything they see. As the clouds were building up I realised I had better park under ground in the centre. We had just gone into the "Reject" shop to get a couple of goodies - it is a great store for cheap party items. When we came out the store the heavens had opened and it was bucketing down outside - all was fine and well until we saw the hail coming down. It was scary enough being in the center watching the hail come down and I was so glad I was not at home on my own. So I told the boys that we would wait in the centre until the storm had passed. It was not longer than 20 minutes but when we got out there was water & chaos everywhere. Trees had fallen - there were huge rivers running down the roads.

We got home to find that we had a pond in the garage and most of the soil around the tree at the end of the driveway was down the driveway and into the garage but thank goodness that was all the damage at home. Once I switched on the tv to listen to the news we realised that we were lucky to be in the shopping centre and not outside. As the storm hit around peak time the damage to cars was huge. The hail was as big as golf balls and plenty of cars are being written off. Most companies do not even insure for hail damage as it is very uncommon in Perth to see hail - in fact they say this is the worst storm in 50 yrs! The below car is not mine but some other poor persons car! Most cars on the freeway looked like this.

I was telling my mom the other day that in a way I was very glad that Heath was in South Africa and I had to attend to the boys as otherwise I would have been in the middle of the storm on my way home on the bus or wading through the water. So all in all very lucky. Below is the road in Perth city that I would have walked through!

Cheers

N