The Fruit of Our Life: October 2011

Natural Disaster Week
This week (Aug. 27th through Sep. 3rd) was filled with fun and then unexpected surprises.

To start off the week we had been at our camper for Saturday, Sunday, Monday and then we came home Tuesday. It was a lot of fun.

I think these pictures are from Sunday. The three youngest boys; aren't they so handsome and adorable.

Carter and Elijah are best buds. Carter always wants to help watch and hold Elijah.

Elijah has now mastered sitting up and playing with things contently. He's so big.

Look at those teeth!

"So cute"

Tuesday morning we all packed up and headed home from the camper. As soon as we got home we all

unloaded the van. Then when we finished that I went inside to fill up the humming bird feeders. While I

was inside filling them up I started to hear a rumble. At first I thought it was just the train, or maybe just an airplane passing overhead. But it kept getting louder and louder. Then I felt the house start to shake and shake. I thought to myself, what could this be it is to loud to be an airplane or and train. Then I thought, wait this could be an earthquake, but I thought to myself, no it couldn't be an earthquake that doesn't happen around here. All I could think of then was to run outside, so I called everyone and I said run outside quick (that was where my dad was). Buy the time Mom, Elijah, Hayden, Bradley, Carter and I got out side the earthquake had already stopped. Then we realized that we left Hannah inside. We found her in her room holding her baby crying did I tell you that Hannah love babies. This whole recount of the earthquake all happened in about 60 seconds.

After we all calmed down we turned on the news. Almost right away they had a report about the earthquake. It said it was a 5.8-5.9 on the Richter scale.

The whole experience made us realize that if it was a dangerous earthquake we probably wouldn't of been very prepared.

Later that day Carter and Hannah got to swim in the pool. While we were at the campground the pump hose cracked open and so it drained out enough for Hannah to swim in it very safely. The pool was almost four feet deep and it drained down to about one foot.

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That Saturday Hurricane Irene came through it was an interesting day. It rained all morning and then around 1:00 we were sitting at the table (that is where the most light comes in our house) drawing and playing different games because there was no power. We had just finished talking about what to do if we heard a tree fall, and then we heard a crack. We all quickly ran to the bathroom, because we all determined that it would be the safest place. After about two hours in the bathroom all seven of us huddled together ( all the little kids were in the bath tub ) Dad got home from work. Dad was only home for about ten minutes, when another tree fell down. The tree was between the pole barn that we keep our big van and boat in, and the garage. We were going to leave for a safer place in that van because we fit a lot better in it, but at least we still had the blue van. So Dad went outside and drove the blue van up to the front door, so that we could all hurry and jump in to leave (the ground was solid as a rock). Then we all quickly jumped in the van. When we were all safely in our seats Dad pressed the gas and oh no, we were stuck in the mud! So we all got out and ran back inside. After about an hour of work, Dad and Hayden got the van out of our front yard. Now we know not to make that mistake again. Also, another tree fell while they were trying to get the van out. Finally we ran to the car and drove away, the scary part was that every time we got in the car it looked like a tree was going to fall on us because it was so windy. We drove to our Grandpa and Grandma Bradley's House because they live in a neighborhood and we stayed there over night. It was very hard to go to sleep that night because of all the trees but eventually we got tired enough. The next morning when I got up my mom was talking on the phone with my Dad, he had left to go and see the damage. After breakfast we all went back home, here is what we saw.