Our Trip to Atlanta, continued...

Moments after I posted the previous post "Go Gators!", a storm rolled into downtown Atlanta while we were staying at the Westin. Lila was sleeping in our room a few doors down while Andrew, his mom, and I were hanging out in his parents' room (don't worry, we had the monitor on). All of a sudden, we heard what we thought to be hail banging on the floor-to-ceiling windows. In a matter of seconds, it turned from bad to worse...the windows started to shake! I ran to our bedroom intending to move Lila's crib away from the window in our room. As I made my way (running) into our room, I heard Andrew running after me yelling, "Get her! Get her! Get her!" I swept her up in my arms and ran as fast as I could out the door. At that time, Andrew was at the door and he slammed the door behind us. As we were closing our door, we heard a loud explosion and realized our window had just blown out! It was a scene out of a movie! Many guests on our hall ran out in the interior hallway, all concerned about what had just happened. After a couple minutes passed, we decided to head back in our room and see if everything was okay. Nothing was missing from our room, but then again we didn't have anything near the window except Lila and the crib. Luckily, we got her out of there in time.

Five minutes later, we heard the tornado siren go off...perfect timing!! I put Lila back to bed in his parents' room (this is about 10:30 p.m.) We continuously watched the weather and saw there was another strong band of storms coming through again. A man, working for the hotel, came over the intercom and told everyone to head downstairs for shelter. Being that we were on the 34th floor, we stuck around and planned to heading to the stairwell for safety, if needed (not smart, I know). We could only imagine the craziness of everyone trying to come back UP once the storm passed. We woke Lila up again (this time around 11:30 p.m.) for this second round of storms and headed to the stairs. This one passed within 15 minutes, uneventfully (thank you, Lord!) We ended up evacuating our room and all (Andrew's parents, brothers, and us) splitting two rooms instead of our original three. Needless to say, we didn't get much sleep that night! We decided to pack our bags the next morning and head home (a day early).

All that to say...We realize how close we came to a possible tragedy. God is so good!

View from our blown out window

The next day...If you look closely, you'll see Patrick posing in the room.

Lila returns to the scene. Poor thing! She had a rough night!

Our family...all in one piece!

We met up with Amanda at Cracker Barrell as we were heading out of town! We all enjoyed her company.