So much has happened since I last wrote. It may take a while..so hold on.
Here we go: a month and two days after the last post, we had the most wonderful and the most horrible day, all at once. Since February, we had been counting down the days until April 27th: that's when the results of the bar exam would be released. On the morning of the 27th at 8:46 a.m., my phone rang, and Bryan said " my name is on the list! I did it!" We were beyond happy! Eight long years of hard work, moving from family, going back to school to get two new degrees, moving from city to city, working every holiday..it all came down to that moment and we had crossed the finish line! We talked about how to celebrate, etc. and then I hung up the phone, got ready, and went to work. Everyone had been helping me count down the days and when I walked in, we all cheered!! It was very sweet! Of course, we had both called our parents and loved one's with all the good news. Little did we know, less than 9 hours, our world would turn upside down and we wouldn't talk about this remarkable achievement again for almost two weeks.
I knew we could have some bad storms that day, but nothing could prepare anyone for what happened at 5:13 p.m. that day. An EF-4 tornado rolled through the heart of Tuscaloosa chewing up everything in its path. Thousands of homes and hundreds of businesses were destroyed. 43 people were killed that day and hundreds more appeared on the initial missing list. There are very few experiences in life that can compare to what happened to our temporary home. I heard some of the National Guardsman that came to help compare it to "war zone". Our home was spared, and it became a temporary hotel for 6 people for the next few days. Two bedrooms, one bath, and we made it work somehow. Everywhere you looked in our little rental, you would see people sleeping, and food was everywhere. Bryan turned into a chef and kept the food coming. We lost our ability to be on air from the moment it hit until about 6:30 a.m. Friday morning. During that time, our crew stayed out in ground zero shooting stories, and I hunkered down in our one working edit bay gathering everything together and making a game plan for the moment we came back on air. We finally got back up with our first newscast at 1:00 p.m. Friday, and that's when I finally saw what had happened. Going to work and coming home were re-routed beyond the damaged areas, so it wasn't until the first videos rolled that I saw what everyone else already knew...it was catastrophic. And, there was no way we would ever be the same.
On this one day, we had gotten the best news of our lives so far, and just hours later, we had survived a deadly tornado, it missed our home by 1/4 mile.
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