Go Big Or Go Home.

Yes this title is a quote from the disney movie "Johnny Tsunami"... what could this post POSSIBLY be about... my first ever tsunami experience! what else :) before i begin, i want to let you all know that EVERYTHING i put in this story is absolutely true. and is NOT made up to make my blog post more interesting.

Put me in a blizzard and i'm fine. stick my in 120 degree heat and i'm gonna be alright... but put me on an island and tell me that there is a possibility that a bunch of waves are coming at me, i don't really HAVE a plan set in place.

Last night i had a meeting for the spouses of Riley's unit. After the meeting i stayed after to talk about a few things that i have to go into the office on Monday and get all squared away. So Steph drives me home, we say goodnight have a few more laughs and i go inside to crash. now at this point it's about 8:45, so i decide to put on an episode of Bones (since i'm now on season 5!) about 30 minutes in i check facebook real quick, and see that in the past 6 minutes 3 different girls had posted about a tsunami Watch for our island. So being rational i check weather.com... absolutely NOTHING on the matter... so i check around and 5 minutes later it's on weather.com. i call Steph and give her the heads up, she tells me that she thinks we should get stuff together just in case we have to evacuate. i tell her if it's bumped from a watch up to a warning... THEN i think we should do just that... 5 minutes later, it's bumped up to a warning, expected to hit at 3 am. I then hear that I am in one of the neighborhoods to be evacuated. so Steph and i start scrambling to get whatever we think we'll need. she packs up her stuff then heads over to my house and we load up my crap.

now the second i think about leaving my house in preparation for a possibly natural disaster i was pretty proud of myself, the FIRST thing i grabbed was my hard drive (has every picture on it!) and all of our important documents (socials, birth cert, marriage cert) all Riley's Military papers. Then i may have lost my mind a little bit... here are a few of the items i packed... and WHY i packed them... keep in mind i didn't know what to expect or how bad to prepare myself for!

• Dog food (totally justifiable... right! ya how about ALL the dog food i had...)
• my perfume (ok steph packed this one.. cause it smells pretty)
• both pairs of rainboots (one for each of us! in case we had to go tromping around in the aftermath of a possible flood)
• canned foods (plus a can opener)
• matches (to cook my canned food of course)
• massive tub of licorice (i knew Dee would be sad if it got destroyed!)
• onion soup mix (ya umm just go with me.)
• 5 jars of almond and peanut butter (haha FIVE.... really???)

ok so thats part of my list... the BEST two items i can't even put on the list, because i need a bit more room to explain my thought process... alright i grabbed 2 onions... now yes thats just an odd thing to grab but the best part is WHY i grabbed them... ok, so i'm planning for worst case scenario, in which a massive wave comes (like Indonesia)  and we are all foraging and scavenging and surviving for a few weeks until everything gets back on track...so i figured... if i brought two onions i could TRADE them... if need be. Ya i mentioned this to Kat, and she almost fell down her stairs and peed her pants from laughing so hard. i also grabbed a box of tampons... now neither Steph nor i needed them... i figured i could sell them... again kat almost died laughing. BUT had it come to that... i would have been prepared!!!

So we had the trunk FULL, we had 3... count them THREE puppies in the back seat and then us in the front. we stopped by walmart and grabbed water... and then headed to Tripler to sit in a parking lot on a hill and wait for the a-ok to go back home... we arrived around 11 pm... by this point my phone was BLOWING UP with texts from anyone who had woken up and had any idea what was going on. and my phone was quickly running out of battery life. i knew that as soon as my mother in law woke up, she'd see the knews and start FLIPPING out, so i shot my father in law a quick text letting him know my phone was DEAD but i was ok, and i'd call when i could. i kept expecting Rye to get online, see everything and call... but as of right now i have still not heard from him.

So we're sitting in the car, listening to the radio trying to get as much info as we can. and they mention that we are expecting 4-6 ft waves... at this point i feel like a BOOB for evacuating.. FOUR FOOT WAVES?! we get 30 footers on the north shore! then they explained WHY 4-6 ft waves were bad. these waves (which is a long series of waves) were coming at us from Japan moving at 500-600 miles per hour, or as the radio host put it (as fast as a jet plane) so imagine a 6ft + wall of water moving at you at 500 miles an hour... umm no thank you! so once again i was just fine with sitting it out on top of this hill.

close to 3 am Kat called and wanted to stay on the phone with me while it "happened" now Kat is my best friend, so i admit things to her that go through my head, and sometimes the second they come out of my mouth, i KNOW they sound ridiculous... but i can't help my thought process... i mentioned that even though i KNEW it wouldn't be like this... part of me expected the whole island to SHAKE when the waves hit... like a mammoth was charging into the island. she laughed, and asked if i could see anything... ok it was 3 am... it was pitch black outside... so no everyone i could NOT see what was going on. part of me kinda thought it would be a couple waves and we'd be home by 4 am if there wasn't too much damage. i didn't expect that the waves would continue for hours, and i would not get home until long after sunrise.

Deezul is extremely protective of me. especially at night time. so while we were trying to sleep. he decided to growl and bark at EVERY single person who even LOOKED our direction... so i stayed up the entire night and had to keep reassuring him that i was ok, and trying to calm him down. as a result of this, when we DID get home... he passed out and hasn't moved since (that's my boy)

All in all it was an interesting night. i think the craziest part, was listening to the tsunami sirens go off constantly... the sound of them reminds you of like world war 2.. you kinda feel like you're in the london bombings or something the damage to Oahu was minimal, some of the other islands were hit harder, and watching those videos puts into perspective how differently things could have gone last night.

My friend Kaitlyns fiance is currently in Japan, so it was so relieving to hear that ALL military personnel in Japan were accounted for! my sister informed me that most if not all missionaries were also accounted for. The videos of the tsunami in Japan make your heart skip a beat, the death tolls are continuing to rise. i will be keeping them in my prayers, and i'm sure you will too! it is such a tragedy, i can't imagine not having any time to flee... i mean it caught them COMPLETELY off guard.

i am now home. and trying to get at least a little sleep, while also replying to texts and phone calls so that anyone worried about me knows i'm alright. but i mean c'mon i'm tough. you really think i'd let some water take me out while my husband is deployed?!

Thank you for all your thoughts and prayers, i appreciate each and every one of you. Deezul and I are fine, we're still on alert... but i can't wait to go see what kind of shells the waves brought in!