Remember that time we got struck by lightning?

Yeah, it was pretty shocking...pun intended.

As is tradition, we decided to go camping over labor day.  As is tradition, the weather did something a little crazy.  Last year it got quite a bit colder than usual and frosted everything.  Mother nature knew she had to keep the streak going but decided to really go all out this time.  Luckily for the bulk of the family that decided to come they stayed in a different campground Friday night that Chad (my brother) had reserved.

I don't know exactly when the storm really got going, but in the wee hours of the morning (I'm guessing around 2:00) the lightning and thunder really took off in a frenzy and so did the rain.  Luckily we stayed pretty dry in our tent, but we would occasionally wake up to the loudest booms of thunder before drifting off again.  Well, at about 5:30 we woke up to a feeling of being jolted off the ground, the tent completely illuminated, crackling, the feeling of singed limbs, and the smell of burning.  Yep, imagine all of those sights, smells, and feelings in about a half a second. Immediately after instinctively trying to karate chop whatever force had done this to me, I realized that we had been struck by lightning and my powers were useless against it.  All of the trees within about 30 feet of us were burned (didn't go up in flames or anything but had a lot of burned spots) and several of them were split open.  The direct strike was obviously one of those trees or maybe all of them at once. We also found after the sun came up that there were shards of wood scattered all over our campsite, a few of them fairly sizable.  Dirt and rock were also blown out from around some of their roots and sprayed our fireplace and canopy.  The lightning also didn't seem to like that our axe and hatchet were buried in a stump at the bottom of one of the trees and blew them a foot or two away.  Luckily I don't think Gavin was shocked since he was in a plastic pack and play that shielded him a little more from the ground.  I know, I know, you have just one question you are dying to know, but so far our new super powers haven't manifested themselves, so we don't know what they are.

We unfortunately aren't currently starring in any reality TV shows so no cameras were running, but I'm pretty sure this is what it looked like at that very second.

The forest service came by to check out what happened and decided they had to cut down at least one of the trees before it just fell over, you can see the burn right down the center of the tree.  They were going to come back after we left to cut down more of them.  We saved part of the one that was cut down in remembrance of the event.

It all started so peaceful...  Yup, just a moose, a truck, and a mountain bike.  Alas, only two of the three were left standing.  It zapped our truck and the Accord parked next to it.  RIP ECU, ABS actuator, and fuel pump.  The insurance has told us they will cover it, so hopefully we'll have the Tacoma back in the next month.

 Remember, when this truck would run?  Oh yeah, the kids were much happier about it then...  but on a happier note:  Go Aggies!!!

Grandma, you can't feed Gavin ALL of the fritos!  Okay, you're Grandma, you can do whatever you want. 

Gavin's new Ibert seat.  We got a lot of good use out of it.  Bikes were a much faster form of locomotion than having to push the truck by hand.  Oh yeah, he tried to fall asleep every time we put him in it.

Well, it turns out we were very blessed.  Even though our cars got fried, we are all okay, or as okay as we have ever been. Any effects we felt seem to have faded out by the end of the day on Saturday. Some or all of you must have included us in your prayers before you went to bed that night.  Thank you!!