Tsunami Saturday

I guess when you live on an island, 20 ft above sea level, sometimes you're at risk for certain natural disasters. Last Saturday we got to see actually how prepared we were for emergency situations.

Friday, February 26, 2010

11:30pm- Noticed a tsunami advisory for the Hawaiian Island on the Internet thanks to the earthquake in Chile and went to bed. Thought nothing of it. (When the big earthquake it American Samoa the other month we were also under tsunami advisory and I didn't even know about it.... In other words, advisory=no big deal.)

Saturday, February 27, 2010

4:30am-Dave gets phone call from his dad (Thanks Dad) and confirms the now Tsunami Warning for Hawaii with the Internet

5:00am-Dave wakes me up, I want to stay in my pajamas like I had been planning on doing.

5:05am-I wander around uselessly while Dave pulls out our "under construction" 72 hr kit to see what we're lacking

6:00am- First tsunami warning sirens go off

6:07am-We get to Foodland (along with half of Laie) to grab the things we were missing (We needed water... of all the stupid things to NOT put in a 72 hr kit!)

7:00am- Second tsunami warning sirens go off, we hear it while we wait in line at Foodland (the store if very crowded)

8:30am- Car is packed, picked up our friend, Elise, and head for higher ground

9:00am- Meet our neighbors up by the Water Tank in the jungle behind BYUH campus. Set up "camp" and eat an entire loaf of French bread



10:15am- Talk about what would get us first--a white polar bear or the smoke monster

11:20am- Take a short walk to where we could see the ocean and the pending danger



11:23am- Sit on a very steep, cement road in the sun, listen to the radio



11:35am- Tsunami arrival prediction time for Oahu comes and goes... no tsunami

11:39am- Hear reports of water receding in the bays on the Big Island from the tsunami, no reports of massive waves of destruction... yeah!

11:40am- National news broadcasters disappointed that it wasn't going to make a bigger story

12:04pm- Hear reports of water receding in Pearl Harbor. Could see absolutely nothing from our vantage point. Try to take a nap on the steep, cement road.

12:30pm- Head back to our "camp" and wait until we were given clearance to head home (thought it could be up to 6-10 hours)

12:46pm- Thought crosses my mind, "Am I really going to break open one of those cans of green beans and eat them cold for lunch?" The answer came quickly, "No, Wendy, not yet... that is why you picked up Ritz crackers and easy cheese at Foodland this morning."

12:47pm- Take a hike into the jungle to find a nice "bush"

1:00pm- Settle back into a camp chair and put my feet up to wait out the rest of the day. I'm not even going to say how swollen my legs and feet were at this point.


1:05pm-Friendly chatter with the neighbors and friends. Felt just like we were all on a picnic having a great ol' time, not on an evacuation.

1:30pm- Listen to the radio for the All Clear. Yes, these little emergency radios are useful. We have 2 and we used them both. (Both were gifts from our parents from the last couple Christmases.)


1:42pm- All Clear given on radio, pack up our camp

3:00pm- Arrive back home safe and sound. No damage done.

Lesson's Learned:

It was easier to evacuate being 8.5 months pregnant than it would have been with a newborn.

If the earthquake would have been on the Big Island, not in Chili, and we would have had 30 minutes, not hours to prepare, well, we would have been very thirsty and without a change of clothes.

Stick with your friends and family and look out for each other during times of great stress. If you're patient, the whole situation will go a lot smoother.

Don't live on the beach.

I'm DEAD!!!

Ok So if no one hears from me in a week, and Wendy puts pictures up of a fishing trip she just went on, you can all assume that she killed me and used me for bait!!!
but this is so everyone can see how cute she looks everyday!!! This picture is a little blurry but you can see just how big she was 3 weeks ago.
Sorry Honey I love you, but the world needs to see how cute you are!!!

Makapu'u Lighthouse

Last Saturday we woke up super early and set out to do some site seeing that we'd been wanting to do for many weekends. Homework always got in the way! There's a lighthouse on a short hike at the opposite side of the island (the point between Kaneohe and Honolulu).
It's also whale season and this point is particularly good for spotting Humpbacks because you are able to get a view looking down on the ocean. Dave was able to see a few really good breaches. I thought it was hard to stare out at the bright ocean for more than 3 seconds, being distracted by the weeds and rocks that were closer up in my field of vision. I mostly saw only blows.

The vegetation is very different over here from Windward side where we live. I thought it was strange that there was so much cactus growing here. It felt more like Arizona than Hawaii... well, except for that big, blue, wet thing!

On our way over there we searched for the plane from LOST. As you can, we didn't really get a good look. But they say it's under that tarp! Raise your hand if you think Dave should be an Productions Assistant for LOST for his new job!

And on our way home from the hike, we went to 3D IMAX Avatar. It only cost $10 for both of us courtesy of BYUH's HR office and our completion of another health challenge. We couldn't leave without getting this awesome picture!

This post is dedicated to Heather who got mad at me for not updating the blog since December. If you read this much of the post, please post a comment so I will know that blogging is back in style!

Past Christmases

Check out some of these old times from Christmas.
This is from when I was about 5 years old. Do you see the little house on the floor... that was my favorite! I think these presents are a combination of Birthday and Christmas because I got the house for my birthday and wouldn't let my sister play with it. So for Christmas she got her own house.


Maybe I'm 8 years old here? This must have been Christmas morning because all gifts in the background are still wrapped.


This is Grandma Whitaker with all of us. Until she passed away in 1998, we used to take her little Christmas tree and some other little decorations to her apartment. After Christmas, we'd go back, pack everything up and then take it back to our house for storage. I really miss going to her house at Christmas time.


When I was about 10 or 11, I was in East Sandy Singers with my sister Cindy (right) and my friend Shelly (left). We learned Christmas songs and then went to like the Festival of Trees, malls, etc. for little performances.


This giant snowman was created by me and my little bro, Jeff, a few Christmases ago.



Stay tuned for our Christmas Report 2009 after we have warmed up under the Hawaiian Sun!

Thanksgiving in Hawaii

We hosted a little Thanksgiving party this year with some of our neighbors. None of us have family on Oahu, so we combined forces to make a great meal and have a day a little different from all the others.

This is our living room, ready to go for the feast. We brined the turkey in salt/sugar water which made for a very juicy white meat! I suggest you try. Here's Dave with Amy, Jaden and Jon, our upstairs neighbors.
This is Sam, Dan and Riley, our garage neighbors.
And here we are with Mindy, the rest of the garage neighbor family.
We had a lot of fun today even though we missed our families. Last year we went to the beach a couple times over the Thanksgiving weekend. This year, Dave's trying to finish an 18 page research paper! Guess what we'll be doing for the rest of the weekend? Not the beach! :(

IT'S a BOY!!!!

Ok so the video here is short, and you can't see much but I was going to do the whole ultra sound but if you listen really carefully you can here the tech tell me we can't video the ultrasound "because some times the video makes it look like the baby is growing two heads or three feet stuff like that, but whatever enjoy!! it is like five seconds long!!



so here is the important picture first!! Wendy was so sure that we were going to have a girl, sorry Wendy!!



then obviously this is a profile picture, for those of you who new Grandpa Larson, if you look close enough you might see him in this picture!!!



and for those who think I might be crazy in seeing my grandpa in this picture you have to look at the face, the nose is really what I'm talking about!!!



and then here is one of my son, looking at the other profile, can't see the face well but he has a good strong back and he has a healthy belly already!!


Here is a bonus video as well some of you have heard about the Haunted Lagoon!! well every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday nights in Oct we heard the haunted Lagoon, we even went twice!! but we heard it so much that when we heard this one section we would repeat it and it got so annoying that we couldn't take it anymore so on the very last night we went again to ride the ride and when we were headed home we heard them call out "last Boat" so we thought that we could share this last bit of the Haunted Lagoon with you it's dark and you can't see much except the glow sticks but Wendy pokes her head in and explains what's happening!!! so Enjoy!! and don't hate us too much if it get's stuck in your head, we had it for a whole month!!!!

Pumpkin Carving

So we started our Halloween Pumpkin Carving Night about two weeks ago, well we've told you all about the humidity around here so we should have known that a pumpkin would go rotten in two weeks, but we didn't so here was a wasted investment in entertainment. oh well easy come easy go!!!
And if you look behind me at the door you can see our movable scarecrow decoration, the scarecrow and some inflatable ghosts that are hanging in our window are the only decorations we have up for this year.



Since we lost our last pumpkin to the humidity we bought two more and carved them after our big ultrasound appointment, and here is us pulling out the guts!!!



This is a close up of my Pumpkin it's a scarecrow, Wendy's is a bugaboo(not pictured),but her's is pretty cool. This year we used a Jack-O-Lantern Pattern Book just so you don't think that we are amazing carvers. No we just cheat!!! the "tools" that we used weren't very good, the small knife for detailing broke early on and then the tracing tool didn't work very well I pressed pretty hard and I could hardly see the marks in the pumpkin so I replaced the paper and cut out the pieces with the paper on the pumpkin.



BOOOO!!! Oh wait here's Wendy's Bugaboo. Obviously finished. it's cool!!



And here is my Scarecrow we worked pretty hard on these!!



I hope everyone has a SPOOKTACULAR Halloween!!!