So these are the diverse places...

I know, I know, it's corny. I really feel blessed to have come through 2 semi-major natural disasters scott-free this week.

Tuesday there was the Earthquake:
I lived on the pacific rim most of my life. I distinctly remember the earthquake of 2001 in Seattle, remember seeing the floors roll as the waves hit. We laughed through that one (the invincible 15 year olds that we were) and quickly moved on to more important things.

This week I was home, with the neighbor's 9 year old twins, and at first I thought that the washer was off balance. Then I realized that I wasn't doing any laundry. In super hero-like bounds I ran through the shaking house and gathered the scared little boys under a door frame with me. We watched the chandelier in the dining room sway as the house jostled back and forth. Eventually I realized that the shaking was slowing and we were all intact. I made the boys stay in the door frame for longer than probably necessary because at this point my legs were shaking violently. It wasn't so much scary, it was just that I was unprepared for an earthquake on the east coast. After we went outside and checked with the neighbors to make sure that there had really been an actual earthquake. Soon facebook lit up with posts from all over the eastern seaboard, and the news confirmed a 5.8-5.9 magnitude earthquake. For some reason, I wasn't able to shake it off as easily as I had as an invincible teenager despite the fact that the damage from this earthquake was significantly less than the 2001 incident.
     

Following the earthquake, and a crash course for the kids on what to do in the event of an earthquake, we began preparations for Hurricane Irene.
5 days ago she looked like this:

They projected category 3 hurricane heading straight for us. Wednesday I went out and bought 6 gallons of water for drinking and researched what to do in the event of a hurricane (fill bathtubs up with water for flushing toilets, hide under mattresses away from windows, tie down lawn furniture, etc). I decided to go down to Kristen's house so that if I got stuck somewhere I could be happily stuck with my family.
Saturday came as a very blustery, rainy day. It rained pretty much all day, but they'd predicted that the storm was weakening to a category 1. No big deal...

We went to bed last night around 11 with the windows open. About 2 or 3am, the power went out, and my cell phone died, no big deal. There were no witches riding bicycles, no flying cows, just lots and lots of tree branches down. It turned out to be (thankfully) not as bad as the hype built it up to be.
My sister's power was back on by the time we got back from church (which made us all happy). Abotu 5 I headed back north to check out the damage in my neck of the woods. Besides the very high lake, and this poor neighbor's house, all appears to be well.


On the bright side I have a semi-functional 72 hour kit (still need to add some bottled water, it was all sold out). I feel very prepared for a future natural disaster.