Shaking and shaking and shaking!

This morning I was in the middle of a muddled, strange dream when suddenly I am awake and the whole house is rumbling. At first I wasn't sure if I was awake or not. I looked around and everything is shaking and I am a bit bewildered. It just sounded like a long, low rumble and the house is shaking. I thought it was later than it was (it was only about 5:40) because Dave wasn't in bed anymore, so I got up to find him. Ady had started to stir a bit too, so I tucked her back in and she went back to sleep. I looked out the windows and everything seemed peaceful and normal outside. My only conclusion is that it was an earthquake. But it was so weird. After I got up, Dave heard me and he said "I have to think that was an earthquake." He had gone in to the boys bed to sleep, because over the night ours had been filled up by children and he ran out of room. At first he thought I was in there shaking the metal bunk bed he was in as a joke, then he realized it was more than just the bed shaking.

I went downstairs to check the news and usgs.gov and Dave tried to get Kyler back to sleep (unsuccessfully). On the news they were just bewildered as well. The news anchors were saying the same things we were. "We just experienced what must have been an earthquake." USGS didnt have anything posted yet, so I went back to the news and Dave and Kyler came downstairs and finally official reports started coming that it was, in fact, an earthquake and it was a magnitude 5.4. I went on to USGS again and they have it recorded now. I noticed a place to record your own experience with the quake, so I figured I would since no one else from our area had. After I filled out a little survey about it, the site said that what I had experienced was level IV effects, compared to people closer to the epicenter who experienced level V, VI, or even VII. Since our house is really old and we were on the second floor, it might have felt more dramatic to us. I will be interested to see if others from our zip code report in and what it says for them. You can look at statistics from the earthquake listed by zipcode here. Its pretty amazing how far away the effects were felt.

When Tayden woke up we asked him if he felt it and he hadn't, but he had lots of questions about it. After the boys left for school Ady woke up and I asked her about it and she asked me if it was lots of "shaking and shaking and shaking?!?" So I guess she did feel something.

I know most of you had similar experiences this morning, so this is not "news", but I wanted to make sure I captured our family's memory of it here. It sure was exciting and something we won't forget. I am glad it was minor and no one was hurt. It does make you think, though, when something like this happens.