Warning....

At 3:50am I hear a ring. I think its our doorbell but I can't be sure. Then I hear it again and I hear someone pounding on our door. I wake up Brian and tell him, "someone is at our door, I think". He's very out of it because he's half asleep. I get up and make him go downstairs with me in case there is a crazy person at the door. I thought I was Ko Olina security waking us up because our garage door was open or something. Brian was thinking it was some sort of medical emergency and our neighbor was getting us. We opened our door and it was Sean, our neighbor. He is military. He came over to tell us about the Tsunami warning. We are half asleep and out of it. I say, "What are we supposed to do?" He looks at me like I'm a moron and says...."Ahh, move up?!" I'm obviously not so good at 4am. So we thank him and turn on the TV. That's when we started our phone tree calling people to let them know before its all over CNN. We started throwing food in a cooler and packing clothes and essentials. On the news they were very stern to everyone about bringing 5 days of food, water and clothes. We were to move things up in case of flooding. People in upper areas were to fill bathtubs with water. We were to lock up well in case of looting. It was serious. So our house that I had cleaned the day before was turned into a disaster. I put my jewelry in ziplocks and packed gramsbear in my suitcase. Brian moved my cookbooks upstairs. We made a good breakfast and left the house at 6:45 to drive to higher ground.

The Tsunami siren near our condo didn't go off so its a good thing the neighbor woke us up. We would have just woke up for work like usual and then wondered why so many people were on the road. We had to cut through town to get up to where we were going (Makakilo). There were long lines at gas stations, ATMs and McDonalds.

We drove up into the mountains in Makakilo (3 miles away). There were all sorts of people there already. We parked on the side of the road about 1600 ft above ocean level. We park our butts in beach chairs by our car and read books and did cross word puzzles. We set up our pop up beach shade tent so I don't get burned. We eat peanut butter sandwiches, chocolate pudding, and mixed nuts. As you know, 6 hours later they release us to go home, with no big wave or damage. We were surrounded for these hours with all sorts of people who obviously don't leave the house much. People in PJs with 5 kids in shirts and no pants. People yelling and swearing at their kids. Basically, there was a "how not to parent" convention going on around us. I had a hard time not laughing. I wanted to take more pictures but at the time I was having camera issues and I didn't think these people wanted their picture taken. After we came home I was so tired, I fell asleep for 3 hours. Then our neighbors who woke us up invited us for dinner. We had a nice dinner on their lanai.

Sun, we woke up and went to the beach at the lagoons here. You could see how high the water came up but no real damage. The water came up about 30 feet in more than usual...about 1 meter in height. It was a windy day. That night we went to a movie (only the third movie since we've moved). We had a bad experience at the first movie we went to...it smelled like moldy feet and was so loud I had to cover my ears the whole time. We went to Shutter Island. These teenage girls ruined only the first 20 min talking loudly in Tongalo (Philipino language) before enough people shushed them and they left. Still loud. Oh, this movie theatre is in Honolulu. So we decided we would go to occational movies only in Honolulu and only at times when kids are in school or later at night.

Then, another week at work.....