Earthquake

So, as I'm sure you've heard by now, the East Coast had a 5.8 earthquake yesterday. We were lucky (if you want to call it that) enough to have felt it- Mr M while he was at work, LMS and I while we were grocery shopping. Mr M works on the second floor of a four story building and they thought at first that maybe a truck had hit the building. LMS and I were in the checkout line at the grocery store and at first I thought there had been an explosion somewhere. But the shaking kept going and going and we all realized it was a real, live earthquake.

During dinner we felt an aftershock (4.2), but it wasn't nearly as long as the original earthquake. After we went to bed Mr M felt another aftershock (3.4), but I didn't feel it, so I'm guessing it was pretty short. There were also a couple smaller aftershocks during the afternoon, but we didn't feel those either.

We haven't found any damage and we weren't hurt, which we're very thankful for.

I've lived in California for about ten years of my life and I don't ever remember an earthquake that strong or that long. I certainly wasn't expecting an earthquake out here. If anything, I'd expect a tornado (though apparently we don't get many of those, either). Quite the surreal experience.

As we were driving home, LMS and I were talking about what to do in the event of a natural disaster: in a tornado, find a strong room with no windows (the basement bathroom in our house). In an earthquake, get outside to an open field as soon as possible (the neighbors down the street have an open field we could go to) or under a strong table or desk if inside (I remember that much from the earthquake drills in elementary school). I then realized that we really shouldn't have just stood there in the grocery store, waiting for the shaking to stop. Luckily there wasn't much damage in the store- just some random packages of food falling off the shelves.

Last night Mr M and I discussed what to do in case of a natural disaster, and realized we also need to make a plan for a fire evacuation. Since the bedrooms are on the second floor we need to get one (or more?) of those ladders that you hang out a window to get out of a burning house. And then we need to do some practice drills for each of the above scenarios so we all know what to do.

Do you know what you'd do if there was a natural disaster in your area?

What we eat

I've decided to periodically do a post about what we ate on a given day, mostly to demonstrate that we actually do eat well :)

Thursday we ate paleo Coconut Flour Waffles for breakfast. While paleo recipes are, for the most part, within our limits, they do frequently use eggs, which we can't eat. I subbed flax eggs for the real eggs, and they turned out ok, though they stuck to the waffle iron. That could be because I bought a new waffle iron though. I was going to use the waffle iron we've had since we were newlyweds, but then I remembered how super-sensitive I am to cross-contamination and decided that wasn't such a great idea so I bought a new one that still needs to be broken in.

For lunch we had leftover Chicken and Vegetable Lo-Mein that I made for dinner Tuesday night. I really liked this recipe and while LMS wasn't a big fan, I'm hoping that's just because I've been trying a lot of new recipes lately.

For dinner we made Grilled Chicken and Veggies. We only recently bought a grill, so we have a learning curve to deal with. Like the grill basket Mr M picked up at wally world was not the type you need to grill veggies (they all fell through the holes). With some jimmy-rigging we eventually got it to work and were able to eat a very yummy dinner.

We've also been making super easy ice cream using our ice cream maker. I found a recipe for Strawberry ice cream, which is yummy, and I've also made it with fresh peaches (even yummier!). We've been splitting the batch in half - half popsicles, half ice cream. I like the texture of the freshly made ice cream the best- homemade soft serve- yum! The rest hardens up nicely into popsicles that are healthy enough to eat for breakfast. Which we did today :)

We're official

Today we received our "authorization" from the county to homeschool Little Miss Sunshine.

Interesting wording since they aren't authorized to authorize us. (does that even make sense?) State law says I have to notify our local school district of our intent to homeschool and provide a curriculum description, and they have to acknowledge it. That's it. Our school district cannot say whether we can or cannot homeschool.

Splitting hairs, I know, and from what I've read on the local yahoo groups, it's a common misconception in the superintendent's office. I'm just happy they didn't request more info. For some reason I thought I didn't need to file a notice of intent for the kindergarten year, and only realized a week and a half before the deadline that I did, in fact, have to come up with a NOI (just fill in a form found online) and a curriculum description (more difficult since you don't want to give more info than is legally required as it would set a bad precedent, but since it was my first time I wasn't sure how vague was too vague). I spent some time collecting all the sample curriculum descriptions I could find, but several seemed to give too much info, while others seemed way too vague. I eventually found one I was comfortable with and used it as a template for our curriculum description before sending it and the NOI to the superintendent via Certified Return Receipt mail (so I could prove I sent it just in case it got lost and so I would know that they received it) with several days to spare.

We've got her reading and math curriculum and her handwriting curriculum was just delivered by the UPS man. We've got our activities lined up (co-op classes, exploring class, soccer, and violin lessons) and we have room in our schedule to take fun fieldtrips. It should be a fun year!

LMS showing off her Junior Ranger pins.

We plan on visiting more national parks this year and adding to her collection.

I've Signed Up For My Next Half Marathon

It's been 3 years since my last one, and it's time to get back on the wagon. I started running again consistently in June and while I didn't do much running in July, I did quite a bit of hiking, so the month wasn't a total wash. Now that we're home I'm running again- even getting up early to do it first thing in the morning before Mr M goes to work, so it's the first time in 5 years that I can go running without also pushing LMS in the jogger :) This is good since I can now venture out on our narrow no-shoulder street on the way to surrounding neighborhoods, which isn't something I would do with LMS in the jogger.

The Saturday before Labor Day I'm running a 4 mile race (the same one I ran last year) and I'll do the 5k Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving. I need to find one or two more races to do before the half, which is the first weekend in January.

I had a lot of fun running the Disneyland half marathon, so I've been looking for another Disney race to run and I finally found one. I'm doing the Walt Disney World Half Marathon, which is actually on a Saturday. Do you know how hard it is to find a Disney race that's not on a Sunday? This is the only one. Five years ago when I did the Disneyland half it was on Labor Day- a Monday. Every year since, it's been on Sunday. Why??

The only reason this half is on Saturday is because the full marathon is on Sunday and they give people the option to run both races, so they have to be on different days.

I'm just happy to have finally found another race (I'm not crazy enough to do a half and a full back-to-back). And hopefully Florida in January won't be too stinking hot, unlike Anaheim in early September, which was miserably hot and muggy.

Where we spent the last 5 weeks

Driving around in a Chevy Avalanche LTZ and camping in a FunFinder 189 FDS travel trailer
 (getting ready to head home, with LMS' toys piled in the back- we didn't have room in the cubes when we moved almost a year and a half ago, so they've been sitting at my parents' all this time)

The truck has great leg room- front and back, and the seats are very comfortable.

LMS enjoyed watching movies on the flip-down DVD player.

The trailer is just a short one- 18 feet, but it's quite roomy, especially once the slide is out.

There's a queen size bed with a fold-down bunk for LMS above it (it can be used as a cupboard if needed).
We took out the mattress that came with it and put our Intelligel mattress in its place. It's now back in our bedroom, so there's no mattress in the trailer right now.

The dinette also folds down into a bed- Mr M's brother slept on this at the reunion in Idaho.

(with the slide in)

(with the slide out, showing the increased floor space)

There's a tiny bathroom which works well for LMS and myself, but is a bit cramped for Mr M.

The kitchen has a double sink, two burner stove, and frig and freezer. Most of the small trailers we looked at only had apartment size frig's, but we needed the separate freezer compartment.

Wardrobe- not super useable as-is, so I'll be making some shelves to install that will make the space a lot more efficient.

There was some bugs to work out since it was new, and there was the learning curve that goes along with being first time travel trailer owners, but overall it was a great experience.

We were able to drive till we were tired, pull into a truck stop or wally world, hop in the trailer and go to sleep. In the morning I could make rice cereal on the propane stove and we could rinse off quickly in the shower. So nice to have the comforts of home while traveling :)

We also got to learn how to use minimal amounts of water- the tanks aren't very big, so we couldn't be extravagant with our water usage. Not that we're in the habit of wasting water, but we cut back even more. Good practice for if we ever have our water rationed.

Sleeping in the trailer in a parking lot worked out a lot better on the way out than on the way back- it was so stinking hot (114 degrees in Kansas) on the way home that we finally broke down and paid to stay at an RV campground so we could have the electrical connection to run the AC. That and some quiet. One truck stop was soooo loud, all night long. None of the others truck stops were even close to that noisy, so I'm not sure what the deal was.

Overall, we had a great time and we look forward to taking many more trips, though I doubt we'll be doing another 5 week trip again for awhile :)

Flora and Fauna of Our Area

 This was just going to be "Critters of Our Area", till I saw this as I walked up the driveway after a run:

Not sure what exactly it is, but I'm guessing some sort of very large fungus.

Now for some critters:

The giant moth that hung out on our window for an afternoon

A frog that decided to say hi one night.

It stayed on the window for several hours.

We got home from our vacation last week and found this guy guarding our kitchen door. It was huge!

We thought Mr M got rid of it, but a couple hours later we looked outside and it had rebuilt its web.

A racoon wandered across our driveway this morning.

And the piece de resistance:

A young black bear that ambled through our yard the other day. It stopped to flip over a log and eat some grubs, then continued on.

Crappy pics of the bear unfortunately, but I swear that black blob is a bear :)

The funny thing is that Animal Control didn't even care- they were very lackadaisical about it. Probably because we live in a rural county as opposed to a city. They said to leave it alone, make sure the trash was covered, and not to feed it. Yeah, no problem doing that.

We kept watching for a momma bear, but she never appeared, thank goodness.  The next day we were on the back porch and Little Miss Sunshine nervously asked if the bear was still around- she didn't want to have a run-in with it :)

Basket for LMS' bike

We gave Little Miss Sunshine a balance bike for her birthday in May. We don't have sidewalks or paving for her to learn to ride on and we thought the walking bike might give her more confidence on the uneven terrain of our yard.

We went with a Hobby Bike, which can be converted to a pedal bike when she's ready (pedals and chain were included).

Being the OCD person that I am, I decided she just *had* to have a basket for her bike :)

I used this tutorial, but used knit fabric for the lining because that's what I had on hand (I wouldn't recommend using knit, but I also really dislike sewing knits).

 

Her dolly fits in nicely. Though usually it's her lambie going for a ride...

Posing on her bike.

Disclaimer: She wasn't actually riding her bike- hence no helmet.

I always make sure she wears her helmet when she's riding her bike.

Sunday Funny

We recently decided that it was time LMS was exposed to princesses other than those of the Disney variety, so we put the original 3 Star Wars movies and The Princess Bride on the list for Friday movie nights.

She wasn't super-impressed with the princesses (we'll have to work on that), but she did think that the ewoks in Return of the Jedi were fun.

After watching the movie, she kept talking about the ewoks, but she didn't call them ewoks. She kept calling them minions (ala Despicable Me).  Hmmmm, I wonder what George Lucas would have to say about that?

image source

My computer is almost up and running again

Ready for the saga?

I tripped over the cord and pulled it off the dining room table on a Tuesday night. I initially thought it was ok, but it spazzed out a short time later and wouldn't start up. I talked to one of my brothers who is computer-savvy and was able to get it to move a little further in the boot-up process, but not much. Mr M was due to return home that Friday night, so I resigned myself to a few days of being computer-less.

When Mr M got home he looked at it and tried some more things, but still couldn't get it to work properly. However, we didn't have time to do anything else with it, since we left the next day for a 5 week roadtrip/multiple family reunions/vacation.

A week and a half later we finally had some time to mess with it again and Mr M took it to a computer repair place. They were able to retrieve the info on my hard drive (good) but reformatted it from a 64 bit something or other to a 32 bit something or other (bad). So while I could now access my stuff, the computer still wouldn't run properly.

Two and a half weeks later we once again had time to mess it with it, and this time we just went and bought a new hard drive. Mr M has spent his spare minutes over the last week or so setting everything up, transferring files, and all that fun stuff.

I'm so glad he knows how to do all this, since I am definitely not the most computer literate person.

My computer should be finished tonight and then I can get caught up on my posts. I had planned on having several auto-posting while we were gone, but the computer problems nixed that idea. So I'll have lots of posts for the next week or so, and then we'll go back to my regular trickle :)