There's a hole in the tree, and the tree's in the ground...

Ah, you know the song, but did you know it happened in my back yard early Thursday morning?

Huge squall storms (not tornadoes, just straight line winds) ripped North Texas early Thursday morning and hit our area hard. We're still in the clean-up stages and it looks like a war zone. Thankfully, it seems everyone is okay, but I've heard estimates of 20 million in damages.

Our damage came from the large American Elm tree in our back yard. For those of you who haven't checked out our back yard, this tree towers over our house and Heath and I together couldn't wrap our arms around it and hold hands. I think it is about 30-40 feet tall. Half of that tree fell on our home, driveway and Heath's car.

Can you spot Heath's car in this picture? If you look close, you can see a tail light. My car was in the garage (behind the tree), so the car was safe, but there was no going anywhere in it!

Here's the damage to the tree. You'll notice the branch on the top missing completely and then the branch below cracked. We had an arborist and crew come out to remove the branches and we think the tree will be saved, an amputee, but still strong!

The roof on our house is trashed, but not letting water in except for in the back room where much of the ceiling was glass. As you can imagine, there isn't a ceiling there now! Heath's car is scratched and dented, but the fence seemed to carry the majority of the weight over the car, so it escaped pretty unharmed - once we finally found it!

We are blessed to have such minimal damage for such a large tree. Blessed that the tree didn't enter the main portion of our home and cause extensive damage inside. Blessed that we have insurance and had a wonderful crew already come out and start helping us. We are truly blessed!