Natural Disasters

Last Tuesday afternoon I experienced my third earthquake.  I had felt tiny ones when I was pregnant with both Kira and Logan but they were nothing compared to this one.  I was over at my parents' house sitting on their couch when it started.  I remember taking a few seconds to look around at everything shaking, realizing it was an earthquake, then thinking, "Oh no, the kids!"  My parents were slower to realize what it was so I yelled to them to help me get the kids.  We went and grabbed them out of their beds upstairs and I was panicking, forgetting what to do in an earthquake.  By the time we got downstairs it was over.

Kira was a little confused and scared, wondering why the house was shaking.  She also commented on the lamps shaking in her room.  My dad took her back upstairs to go back to sleep and I told him to read her a book first.  She picked out a book about Samson.  My dad got to the last page and realized it was probably the worst possible story to read at that time.  Here is why:



Thankfully, Kira didn't seem to be bothered by it.  My parents' house didn't seem to be affected by the earthquake at all.  When I got home to our house I found a lot of things that had moved or fallen and one place where the floors were damaged.  A couple of nights later we had a significant aftershock shortly after 1 a.m.  I woke up immediately but stayed in bed while I waited for it to end.  I woke Jeff up and told him there was an aftershock happening but as usual, he was dead to the world and didn't really take in what I was saying.  I mentioned it to him the next morning and he had no recollection of that happening at all.

After the initial earthquake I went around with the camera taking pictures of everything that moved, fell, or broke.  As you can see, nothing very serious happened...although those hats did fall from a very high ledge in our closet and made a big mess for me to clean up.











On Saturday we had Hurricane Irene pass through town.  We were able to see some of the strong winds and rains before the sun went down and then things calmed down later in the evening.  After we had all gone to bed the storm picked back up around 1 a.m.  It was pretty noisy as the walls and windows were shaking, things blowing on the roof, and large tree branches falling in the backyard.  It was enough to stress me out and I couldn't fall back asleep.  I turned the tv back on to watch the news and the power went out around 2 a.m.  When we woke up in the morning the power was still out and projected to be fixed by Monday evening.  We decided to pack up some stuff, empty our fridge and freezer and head to my parents' house.  Of course, it turns out we didn't need to do that as the power came back on around noon.  I guess it was a good excuse to clean out and rearrange our fridge!

I'm looking forward to a peaceful night of sleep and hopefully a week free of natural disasters!  We are scheduled to go on vacation in the Outer Banks in 3 weeks.  As of now some of the roads in Duck and Kitty Hawk are impassable and/or gone.  Hopefully the house we are renting will still be standing and we will be able to get there later in September.