When God Goes Bowling.

As a child, when it would thunder and lightning outside my parents told me that God was bowling. It was their attempt to make thunderstorms less scary. And honestly for the most part it worked.

Last night I was excited to go to bed early. Trying to get over a summer cold, I was reading in bed getting ready to pop in a disc of Greys Anatomy Season Two. (What can I say, I'm a little obsessed, and so ready for Season 3's dvds to come out!)

The phone rang and it was my parents. My parents who are rarely up past 8:30pm, let alone making phone calls. They were calling to let us know about the bad storms headed our way.

No call from J's parents who usually happen to call if there are more than 8 clouds in the sky and if there happens to be a slowdown on any possible metropolitan roadway.

So we flip on the news and see a weather person actually in our town reporting on the storm coming our way. It got darker and darker, louder and louder. The wind blew harder and then the rain and hail hit.

We have lived in this house exactly three years yesterday. We have replaced our roof twice. We have replaced parts of our siding twice. We have replaced gutters and other outside things.

When storms come to our house bad things seem to happen. (Not as bad as someone else I know, but still bad.) So with the lights flickering on and off, thunder booming loudly, lightning seemingly so close we could possibly get struck and hail and winds blowing, we decided it might not be the worst idea to move downstairs away from windows.

So with that J woke T and grabbed M, I grabbed H and we headed down underneath the steps where my husband has crafted some sort of "storm" shelter complete with a weather radio, freeze dried military meals, matches, flashlights and a deck of cards. (You don't even need to tell me what this entire storm shelter set up screams to you. I know.)

While both M and H kept sleeping, and seeing as the clock was now inching towards 12, I too closed my eyes.

When the storm calmed down, I awoke to a flash.

My husband was taking our picture underneath the steps, cuddled up in blankets, T, M, H and myself, soundly sleeping.

I took that as a sign that if the weather is good enough for him to run upstairs, grab the camera, stand and take pictures of us, it's good enough for us all to go to our own beds.

So far this morning, I haven't noticed or found any house damage. But we've got some green grass and some green growing plants.

Good game, God. M and I think you must have scored big.