What the hail?!?

Update: Remember how I said the hail didn't damage the Jag? Well, I was wrong. Michael and I noticed a few dings on the top and on the hood of the car; hopefully our insurance will cover it.

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If you live in the Phoenix area, you most likely experienced falling ice... I mean falling golf balls, or maybe falling softballs... oh dear, what's that stuff called? Oh yes, hail! And I mean lots of it, and not the small pebble kind, but the golf ball to softball sized hail. Was that crazy, or what? We have our cat car (as caitie likes to call it), also known as the Jag (short for jaguar), parked in our driveway right now, so when the hail hit, that's the first thing that came to mind. I told asked Michael to get the cat car under cover; he gave me a puzzled look as he asked where to put it. We have a three-car garage, but there's no room for the Jag (don't ask). So we crossed our fingers that the Jag would make it through the hailstorm unscathed. Once the hailstorm was over, Michael checked on the Jag and all was well, thank goodness, but our neighbor wasn't so lucky, the hail went through his skylight. Michael's brother was another that wasn't so lucky; softball sized hail came crashing through the front windows of his house and dented his vehicles, including his RV. There were power lines down on the freeway, lights were out in some parts of the city, some homes were without power, trees were down in some areas, and there was flooding in some areas as well. I enjoy a good storm, but I do feel for those that are dealing with damage due to the storm. I took a few pics when I wasn't running around screaming and acting like a lunatic (the hail was loud when hitting the house, which startled me; that's the excuse i'm using for behaving like a lunatic), they came out lousy, but thought I would share them anyway...

I took this pic around 1:30pm. I love cloudy days. I took this pic from the master bedroom deck, which is upstairs; behind our house and across the street is a lake. See how calm the lake is?



This is what it looked like around 3.5 hours later. You can't even see the lake in this pic; it was quite a downpour, and quite windy.



Then we heard loud banging... this was the golf ball sized hail hitting the house. The hail Michael and Caitie are holding in their hands had melted a bit by the time I took this pic, so the hail was actually a little bigger than what you see here.

They were like kids on the first snow day of the year... they couldn't wait to get out in it. They were collecting hailstones (hailrocks is more like it, if there were such a word)... I had to remind them not to throw them at each other like you do snowballs; that wouldn't have been pretty.

Bailey was amused by it all...

She then decided it wasn't such a big deal after all.

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