Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Earth shattering news

We live up in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. The land discovered by Lewis and Clark and purchase by Thomas Jefferson for a song (and a dance) a couple hundred years ago, but not yet discovered by the masses.

By God's grace, our neck of the woods is really a piece of Heaven on earth. We get to enjoy four seasons (you know; baseball season, fishing season, football season, and basketball season). Though we have some nasty creepy crawlies (like Brown Recluse and Black Widow spiders) and snakes out here aren't too friendly (the famed and feared rattlesnake doesn't want anyone to forget it was here first), in general, it is pretty safe. We don't have hurricanes or tornadoes, and we're fairly well protected from tsunamis in most places.

Over the course of our recent history, though, we've had a few exciting things. A volcano has blown its top. And, earthquakes have shaken our foundations a time or two. Never very seriously, but enough to say we'd been in an earthquake. Actually, I've been in at least two.

A couple of my daughters and I were actually very close to the epicenter of one during our recent visit with friends in Moses Lake, WA. It was pretty minor (3.2 on the richter scale), and we didn't even really feel it. All that really matters is the fact that it happened. One interesting piece of information the news cast left out, though. Just about the same time the earthquake was registering, a bunch of very exuberant little girls were running down the second floor hallway of a local hotel on their way back from playing in the pool. A coincidence? I don't think so!! And, for the purposes of discouraging such behavior in the future, this mom thinks the timing works out quite well. Next time my children think about running, I can warn them not to, they might cause an earthquake!