One more thing...

So, two days after the Rotten, Stinkin' 44th Birthday we go to the beautiful campus of Auburn University to collect the child from cheerleading camp.  The hubby and I started out in the wee hours in the morning (after staying up too late with some good friends, cheap wine and cheesy pizza) and made it just in time for dorm check out (at the unGodly hour of 7 a.m...when the camp final competition doesn't even start until 9! Ugh.) But...it was a lovely time once everything cranked up and, of course, I was glad to get the kiddo.  The whole squad represented and won many awards and lo...the blessings were abundant.

And then there was the drive home.  Right after the cheer competition was over, we grabbed some lunch and ran into another cheer parent who, in parting, said, "Hey...watch out for the weather...I hear there may be some storms."

Yeah, Buddy, there were some storms.  We got about 30 minutes North of Auburn when THE. BOTTOM. FELL. OUT. We were caught in a torrential downpour...and the wind was blowing like crazy.  We were practically crawling along...we were actually in a residential area of Lafayatte, AL.  The main road (Hwy 431) cuts through downtown and then through a beautiful, oak and elm-lined area that reminds me very much of a small scale Garden District in New Orleans with the grand old houses and the huge trees that canopy the streets.  I usually really enjoy that part of the trip.
This time however, it felt like we were in the middle of a hurricane...but honestly, there was nowhere to stop...and then we realized we were in the middle of a SHARKNADO! as a ginormous great white shark fell out of the sky and attacked our van:

Or maybe it was just some big-ass tree limb that broke off of one of Lafayatte's historic landmarks and took out the whole driver's side quarter panel and headlight assembly.  Either way, it scared all three of us to death!  And it wasn't until we got out of the worst of it and were able to pull over that we realized how bad it was...not to mention how bad it could have been.  I mean...if we'd been traveling just a titch faster, that puppy would have been smack on the wind shield.
A little further down the road, we stopped at a Burger King to take a full assessment (and pee) and discovered part of the big-ass limb still lodged in the luggage rack on top of the car:

So I guess we were almost killed by an elm...not a shark after all.  I'm still telling folks it was the Sharknado, though.