Our Tsunami

I don't think there is too much to write about this considering the entire world was glued to CNN to see if Hawaii was going to be wiped out by a Hollywood style tsunami. But we did have an interesting day even if the wave was a dud. My first text at 3:40am came from an East coast friend who used to live down the road saying there was an earthquake in Chile and a tsunami warning had been issued for Hawaii. Apparently, many of those same text/phone calls were coming into our friends from family on the East coast and then we started getting calls from our friends who live in Ewa Beach that needed to get to higher ground and that they were gathering the few necessities and things they couldn't live without (in case their house was washed into the ocean) and heading up to our house on Makakilo Hill. We thought we seemed save enough here, but when we googled Makakilo's elevation a few of us were concerned that it's only 400 feet above sea level....but we are about 7 miles from the ocean, so maybe we'd be ok???!!! People (and dogs!) got here around 5am (we had 9 adults, 5 kids, and 3 dogs). Thankfully there are four families of our close friends here that live on Makakilo hill, so everyone coming from a flat zone was able to spread out among friends. And then we watched and waited just like everyone else in the world. We heard the tsunami sirens make the first warning at 6am and we scoped out the best spot to walk to so we could get a clear view of the ocean and Waikiki, but that's about as exciting as the day was. The kids played, people napped, people drank, people complained that we wished this were a work day, and then they all went home. THANKFULLY, they had a home to go home to, but it was somewhat anti-climactic!!


I must add that while living in Paradise for the past 7 years we've experienced an earthquake (before my blogging days, but pretty scary...shook us awake on a Sunday morning and we lost power, but not for too long), a tornado (just down the hill from us), we had what felt like a monsoon season when it rained for 41 days in a row, we have an active volcano (Kilauea) on the Big Island, and now we've experienced a tsunami (sort of). Thankfully, not a single one has caused much damage, and I suppose when we get hit with blizzards like the East coast has this winter, we will be complete! :)


A walk to the corner to see how many people had parked in the church parking lot to wait it out...it was like a tail gate party over there!
Colin drew a wave...we thought it was eeriely impressive for a 4 yr old.
The kids passing the time

Sorry, Michelle, I couldn't resist....at least I didn't tag you on Facebook! :)