Horrible times

For those of you who don't know...My parents lost their home in the Joplin tornado. My cousin and his wife and children also lost their home and possessions. They were able to salvage a few photos and collector items but not much.
My parents story...
My parents usually come to our house to see the babies on Saturday since my dad is a teacher and doesn't get to see them all week. The weekend of the tornado my dad had a track meet on Saturday so they came over on Sunday instead. We had the TV on and heard the sirens and heard the warnings the first time but like many other people looked at the projected course (north of our house) and didn't do anything different. They interrupted the TV several times with updates which we did watch but still chose to continue playing. All of the sudden they came on with an update that said a tornado was on the ground on 7th street, again, not worried I live on Silver Creek (44th) felt pretty safe. Then the news anchor said lets go to tower cam. That is when I saw the size of the tornado and said, "holy ... we have to get out of here!" We have no shelter or basement in our house. My thought was if the tornado shifted course at all we could be hit. The 4 of us loaded 3 kids in their car seats (yes buckled them in too), grabbed extra formula and diapers, loaded up the dogs and headed to my mother-in-laws house a few blocks away. I did not time this adventure but can tell you that I for sure was speeding and I do believe that I must have set a speed record for loading 3 infants and all their belongings and taking them to safety. We rode out the storm in their basement. As soon as the storm had cleared we took the kids back home, I grabbed my nursing bag with first aid supplies, and my dad and I headed to check on my grandparents. Remember the last thing we heard was that it was on the ground on 7th street. My grandpa lives near 2nd street and had told us he was going to finish watching the cards ball game instead of taking shelter because they were in extra innings. My other grandparents live just off of 4th street and have no shelter. As large as the tornado was when I saw it on tower cam I knew they could have both took a direct hit. As we drove into town (for those of you familiar with Joplin) I took Connecticut north heading to their houses to check on them very unsure of what I would find and praying they would be alive. As we got to 26th street my dad and I looked at each other and said "this can't be good". The closer we got to 20th our concern shifted from my grandparents to my parents home. We knew it would be badly damaged to say the least. I had to park around 22nd street (I think) it was really hard to tell where you were. We walked in from that point. I drug my nursing bad with me but after walking about 2 blocks I realized there was absolutely nothing in my small first aid bag that was going to help anyone that may have injuries from such a great storm. We got onto my dad's street and I could see his roof was gone so I decided to tell him before he saw it for himself. Our thoughts then turned to their dog who was home alone at the time. She hated going to the basement and had never gone down their without them leading the way. We got to the house and found the front wall laying in the living room and the next wall laying in the kitchen. Their garage was completely missing and my dads car which used to be in the garage was still sitting there but was damaged. We yelled and yelled for the dog and heard nothing. We went to the door to the basement and saw the window was broken out so we unlocked it and went in. We could not find her anywhere. We were both devastated. We did talk to the neighbor who said my brother had already been to the house but he didn't see him leave so didn't know if he had found the dog. My grandpa (mom's dad) showed up looking for us because he couldn't get calls to go through and was worried. I was trying to get word through to my mom that we couldn't find the dog but phones weren't working. She did manage to get a text from my brother saying just stay where you are because your house is gone. Following directions like any good mother does, she got in the car to go to her house. We all stood around and talked a while completely in shock. I finally talked them into going back to my house because the neighborhood was full of leaking natural gas. Once we got back to my house we had better phone signal (still not good) and we were able to let some people know we were ok but could still not reach my brother about the dog. I went back to my mother-in-laws to use her land line to make some calls and was able to receive a call from my brother and confirmed...He rescued the dog!!! I finished my phone calls and went back to my house to tell my parents. We were all elated. None of us could sleep so Rusty and my dad got in the truck and headed in to see if they could salvage anything of value (my dad's coin collection for one) before looters got into the area. We didn't realize how many people were coming to secure the areas that were the worst hit. My dad did get his collector coins and found one of my moms rings and a few other things. I think they got home at 2 or 3am. We finally went to bed around 3 or 3:30 but still had trouble sleeping. We were up really early the next morning to go search for things again. The good thing about my parents house was that their bedrooms still had the ceilings intact and they did have a basement which was untouched. We were able to salvage things from the bedrooms the first day before the rain took out the ceilings. We were able to tarp some things in the basement in order to buy us time to get it all moved. All of our pictures were in the basement and still dry, thank goodness. We spent a lot of time over the last 2 weeks working on their house, my cousins house, and my uncles storage unit in duquesne. It has been very trying to deal with this disaster, have 2 extra people in our house, and run my dog daycare business which is short 1 employee right now. (we only had 2 to start with) My parents left yesterday on a cruise that they had already pre-planned and were glad to get some R & R in the wake of these awful storms. Rusty and I took more of their stuff to storage today and got the garage cleared out so I can use it again. We were also able to clean more of their dishes and get them boxed and taken to storage so I could get my kitchen back into a working order. Things are coming together slowly and I am hoping to have things to a new "normal" by the time they return. Here are a few pictures that I took before my camera battery died. I did get some better ones on my phone but haven't got them transferred yet.

My dad's car. Spoiler was found in the back yard. All windows are broken out except the front windshield.

Master bedroom behind the wall with the X on it. you can see their closet from the living room. The pile of stuff in the foreground is what we threw out so we could see if their was anything to be salvaged. It was mostly walls and furniture.

The garage where my dad's car had been. We pulled the garage/house wall out so we could get to other things in the house.

What used to be the living room and kitchen. They were separated by a wall that no longer exists. For those of you who saw the canvas I got her for mothers day, it was hanging on that wall. We found it dirty but unharmed behind the couch. We later found out it did have 2 stains on it that we can't get off so we will replace it later.

Another view of the living room and kitchen. Taken as if you were at their front door. The back of the cabinet you see was against the wall in the kitchen and full of glass stuff. The cabinet was face down on the kitchen floor but a lot of the dishes survived amazingly.