Our VERY Eventful Weekend...

For those of you who know that we live on a tiny Island of Okinawa, Japan, and if you've watched the news lately, you will see we made headlines twice...that is, Okinawa did, not us. :)

Anyway, early saturday morning, around 5:30am, we were awoken to a 7.0 earthquake just off the coast of Okinawa. Being new to the sensation of earthquakes, I froze in bed and didn't know what to do, and was actually wondering if I had time to put on more decent clothing in case we had to evacuate the house, or just grab the kids and run out the door in my underwear. Anyway, John got out of bed and helped Bella under a doorway, and I finally got to my feet (and put some pants on at least...too much info?...well it is an island and it does get hot here at night)...and I tried to wake up Ben (who seriously would have slept through it if his mother wasn't screaming at him and yanking him out of bed to the doorway) and after about 30 to 40 seconds it stopped.

None of the kids wanted to go back to bed after that, and poor Bella has said several times since then that she doesn't want to sleep in a "shaky bed".



Anyway, we are fine and no damage to report except a broken glass picture frame and a few unending nerves.

Then later that same day, (or maybe I should say through-out the week, my little Amelia has been sick with an eye infection, ear infection, constant cough and high fever that came back every 4 hours after her medicine wore off). When I last took her temperature, it was at 104.9 and I finally resulted to take her to the ER (which would be the second time this week, as the first time was because of her eye and ears).

So then I proceeded to take all 3 kids with me to the ER, fully equipped with Leapster Gamers for the older kids and as much snacky food as my purse could hold (expecting it to be a long night), as it was a 5 hour trip.

In the end, they said Mia had a virus and it had to run it's course, however, they detected a heart murmur and ordered chest x-rays. After examining the x-ray, the doctor informed me that either someone messed up the x-ray, or that my daughters heart and liver were on the opposite side than normal. As this only happens in 1% of the population, he ordered a second chest x-ray (luckily by this time 3 hours in, John came to my rescue and took Ben and Bella home) and when the second ones came back, luckily, she is like everyone else with her heart on the right side, However, he said that both x-rays did show some kind of heart abnormality that they wanted more tests to confirm. After an "abnormal" EKG, they have scheduled us to come back on Monday to do an ECHO test (short for some long name that I can't type). So tomorrow, we will find out what might be "abnormal" about her heart, hopefully nothing serious.

Then Sunday, after waking up sick myself, and Mia still had a fever, she and I stayed back from Church only to learn that since the Chile earthquake, there was a Tsunami warning for Okinawa and it was expected to have 9 foot waves. Once John got home, we talked about what we should do, and felt that we were not in any immediate danger, as we live on the China Sea Side of the island and not the Pacific side where it was predicted to hit.

However, by 1pm, our base was alerted to evacuate if your home was 0-30 feet in elevation...I'm sure ours is like 40 feet, but we wanted to be on the safe side, (and plus, we thought if we left the base and went to higher ground, we might get to see some Tsunami action from above).

We packed up our emergency grab-bags, snacks, a set of clothes, games for the kids, important documents, our camera (for hopefully good pictures) and tried to see how fast we could get out. I think it took us like 15-20 minutes (we'll have to work on our time) but it was a good drill for the family to see how prepared we are.

We headed off-base and was totally surprised at the non-concern that local residents displayed as there was no traffic and we saw tonz of people on the piers waiting for some tsunami action too,(either that, or there are a lot of depressed and suicidal people on this island).

We headed to a playground that sits on a hill just above our base that has a great view of the shore,


and then we waited...

while the kids played....

all the grown-ups waited, and honestly, we were a little disappointed as we saw nothing out of the normal, except what looked like the tide coming in from low-tide.


So, 2.5 hours later, we were allowed back on base and now, I am getting an ear infection as we speak (or as I write) that may need a trip to the doctors to get antibiotics for....man it never stops!

SO, that was our VERY eventful weekend...(Earthquakes, ER's and Tsunami's, OH MY!)...this next week should be pretty uneventful (I hope) as John heads out of town to attend a Dental meeting at DISNEYWORLD!....I'm sooooooooo jealous and it's soooo not fair! I told him they need to mandate that all moms have to attend "Mom Meetings" at cool places too once a year to keep our licenses as moms.....where is my week long vacay with no kids? Seriously? John, you better bring back your wife something nice!