Remember the Saturday when....

I rolled over and noticed Micah wasn't in bed? I assumed he was doing dawn patrol-we always talk about how on Saturdays that's the only way to have fun out surfing. I rolled over and went back to sleep. Taj came up to cuddle just before 7. I told him it was early. At 7 the sirens I had heard as a kid for tsunami warnings went off. I had to think, was it really the first work day of the month? What is going on? And why have the downstairs neighbors been making so much noise?
Taj and I got up to see what was going on. Turns out I had slept through the first tsunami siren and a few phone calls. We turned on the news and Micah searched the Internet for info about evacuation zones and locations. We got water, food, sleeping bags, first aid kits and put it in the car. We got us ready and kept researching. The more we learned we were on the "safer" side of the island and not in the grey evacuation zone the more we got to thinking we'd stay home. By 10 am we had to decide and we committed, for better or worse. I guess I'm a little jaded from all the false evacuations I went through as a kid.
We went for a walk because the kids were making us crazy- they knew something different was up and didn't know how to deal with it. It was eerie. A ghost town. We walked over to the stables to check on the horses, and even they had evacuated. I kind of questioned our decision at that point. It was a beautiful beach day. Stables was breaking so clean. We got a little angry that Mother Nature didn't plan this for a Sunday, or ugly beach day. Poor us huh.
At home we watched the news anxiously to see what would happen in Hilo. The tsunami was late. Once we saw some action in Hilo it was awesome. The tide began "inhaling" at an amazing rate. Withing a minute you could see a foot or two of reef exposed. It was receding so quickly that it made white water, like a rapid. Then a minute later it came rushing back in with the opposite effect. It was a little alarming, but that was just about the worst of it. I felt bad for all the people that evacuated at 4:30 in the morning, like some nice tourists a few condos down had. It was a wise move- better safe than sorry. I'm so so very grateful that we were all safe and sound.

This is what we would've rather done. Oh, and Malik's birthday present is still sitting on the counter. The kids were pretty disappointed in missing that. I love the hours of operation sign. It's assumed in Hawaii, so it's refreshing to see someone be honest about it.