Natural Disaster Preparations

First there was an earthquake. Yes, an East Coast earthquake. How often does that happen? Apparently not very often.

Then there was Hurricane Irene storming north along the coast last weekend. She brought heavy rain and howling wind to our neighborhood.

It started last Tuesday when I felt the house shaking at about 1:45 p.m. Huh, that's strange, I thought. I haven't felt that since Japan. It feels like an earthquake. But that can't be right or can it? Yup, definitely an earthquake. Olivia didn't even wake up from her nap, so I classified it as a small one.

Next on tap was Hurricane Irene, which was downgraded to Tropical Storm Irene by the time she reached our neck of the woods. Being in the mountains, we were far enough west (out of Irene's 300 mile reach) that we didn't need to evacuate our home, but we did need to fill our weekend locked inside the house during the storm. Being familiar with typhoons on Okinawa, I elect to stay inside during these types of storms.

Olivia suggested we bake "pink cupcakes" using monkey cupcake liners that she previously picked out at the grocery store.

Meanwhile Benny built shelves for our garage and then organized the boxes stored out there for me. (Something that has been on our to-do list since moving into the house in April.)

After naptime, Olivia was happy to wake up to freshly baked strawberry cupcakes topped with cream cheese icing. It was a productive hurricane day for the Volkmanns.