rumblin...

Tonight we had one of those great California adventures - an earthquake! Cassidy and I were in the kitchen when we heard the rumbling, such a low bass that it drums right through your body. After a few seconds of rumble, the shaking started and before long it was like a train running right through our backyard. Every time an earthquake hits, you have that split second where you need to figure out if this is a fun one, or if the house is going to start falling down around you.
With this one, it took about 10 seconds and it was clear that this one was all fun. It hit 5.6 on the richter scale which is pretty much the perfect "fun" earthquake. It's big enough so that everybody within 80 miles feels it, it shakes enough that you'll be thinking about it for days, and yet nobody gets hurt and nothing breaks. Once you cross over that 6.0 mark, someone is going to be hurt and there will be damage somewhere. Then there's 1989 and the Loma Prieta quake - don't get me started!

So, what does tonight's quake have to do with Owen looking down a hole? Well, this was the first quake that Owen has experienced, at least in his 5 yr old list of memories, and he was pumped up about it! He and Grant were upstairs while Cassidy and I were downstairs. Staci had just walked out to the Garage. As the quake was hitting its apex, I was running up the stairs to make sure they were ok. Owen had this huge smile on his face, "Wow, that was cool!"
"Owen, that was an earthquake! The ground was shaking under our feet." I started to explain. I tried to explain it to Grant but he was having none of it. He didn't seem fazed by it.
"Dad, let's do that again!"
"Well..." I started
"Hey Dad, let's go look and see the animals that were shaking the house."
"Huh?"
"Yeah, let's look down and see the animals!"
After a few minutes, we realized that he wanted to check out the crawlspace under the house. Armed with his flashlight, he was ready to take on the world. Who knows what he thinks has been living down there, but evidently it's big enough to shake our house!