Dear Diary,

You would not have imagined what my family went through last night.

We had a huge storm which caused tornado warning sirens to sound over our county. My mom, my friend and I had planned to see High School Musical Live downtown. On our journey to pick my friend up, we found trees down on every street, places where the water was almost too deep for our car, and our house had lost power. My friend, Hannah, did not show up at her door, so my mom and I waited for a couple of minutes for her, but in the end, we decided to go home.

We had no power, and my brothers were home alone without power and candles lit inside the house. My mom felt guilty, and she felt better when we decided not to journey downtown.

We came home to find water in our basement. Our  Sum-Pump did not have a battery backup and  since  we had no power, we had no system to pump out the water. Our basement ended up with 2 inches of water, destroying some of its contents. We had to order pizza to eat dinner; we had no stove to use.

We then heard the tornado sirens and thinking of Penny, I moved her downstairs to the family room in case of a tornado. We watched a movie on my dad's computer and ended up moving Penny back upstairs to my bathroom.

My family and I fell asleep with burning candle wax in our rooms in case we needed light.

The important problem was we may not head to South Carolina for vacation on Saturday. With no power and a wet carpet, my mom wasn't sure if we could leave.

Today is Friday, August 24. Today would be the exhibition, but I called the Horse Forum this morning and unfortunately the exhibition is canceled, and the bus didn't show up for the morning class. I did not bother to call once more; I decided to help Mom out with the house.

The vacation remains undecided. Mom says my dad may be able to call a company to help with the wet carpet without power. I write this post in Starbucks in the middle of the day. For now, I do not know if I will have power before we likely leave for South Carolina. I will write if or when I return from South Carolina.

God bless you! Hope these troubles do not happen to you!

~Meg/Horselvr1188