Halloween Flood 2015

We flooded again. We are lucky. Our houses are all high out of the flood plain. It was still a crazy day.
The kids were excited that morning. They got to dress up in costumes and were going to have champs day at school.
We loaded into the car in the dark around 7:15AM in a torrential downpour. It was scary. Before we got off the ranch I called the kids elementary school. "Is it okay there?", I asked. "Sure! It's barely raining here.", I was told. So we drove a bit more.
By the time we got to the corner of the ranch I was terrified to drive any more. At that moment the alarm went off on my phone. I glanced at it and it said there was a tornado warning and to seek shelter immediately. I pulled over, turned around and white knuckled it home.
We ran straight for the kids closets with flashlights, kindles and my phone. We had no internet, but though the power flickered, we kept it on most of time. I saw on my phone that the tornado was headed directly for our house. Luckily, it didn't hit us. The wind was so loud, though. It was keening and rumbling. Crazy.
Eventually we ventured out of the closet and headed over to my mom's house to help out as Dad was having a rough day. It was a surreal day. As we drove over to my mom's house, the rain stopped, but I could see that the river was coming up. An hour later the river was roaring. It kept rising and rising. We would go out and watch it and listen to it. We could hear the trees breaking and snapping. It was incredible.
We spent the day holed up at Casa Pacifica. Mom and Davis worked on his veteran's day poster. The kids played. We all watched "The Book of Life". It was very, very surreal.
Michael was trying to fly home from California, but the air traffic tower in Austin was flooded so flights were delayed and cancelled. Michael flew from LA to Phoenix to Las Vegas and eventually to San Antonio around midnight where he rented a car and drove home. I was glad to see him!
I went down to the river this morning to see how it looked now that the water has receded. It is so, so, so sad. It used to be a park down there. There were so many pecan trees that it made a total canopy over the green grass and green river. It was always cool down there because it was so shaded and now, after three devasting floods, the trees are gone. I saw only two trees left standing this morning. Some are bent over and may stand back up, but we shall see. The grass is washed away. We may be left at the end with a beach. It is so, so sad.