Chino Hills Earthquake 5.4

The day after Jayden's birthday and today's was the kids' first earthquake. I had already left for work and was on the freeway when the earthquake hit, so I completely missed everything. I didn't feel a single thing! But since I was on my way to work, I wasn't home to see how the kids reacted to the earthquake. To top it off, when I finally found out about the quake, which was almost 10 minutes afterwards, I couldn't call home to find out how Steph and the kids were doing since I couldn't get through.

Anyway, all is well at home. As far as earthquakes go, this was not that bad. When I got to work, I used the work phone to check on the wife and kids, and they sound good. Steph sounded completely together and had a game plan on how to keep the kids occupied. Steph said the boys were a little freaked out. JJ sounded more so than Jayden. Lucy on the other hand was sound asleep when I left home, and would've been still asleep except Steph took the precaution of taking her from the bed which was under a ceiling fan... good move! I don't know if would've had the presence of mind to do that. I haven't been home yet, so I'm having visions of Steph rounding up her chicks. After the quake, it has been nonstop news on TV, so Steph put the kids to watch something else to distract them. After I turned on the TV on my dinner break, I found out why...

It was nothing but quake news. And to a freaked out kid like JJ, it would've been more stuff to worry about seeing the destruction that others had while we only had a few pictures fall off the wals and stuff. Anyway, I am absolutely bummed that I could not be home with them to talk to them about it, to comfort them, educate them, all that stuff. But at least I know that they are ok and that Steph has them distracted.

Jayden's birthday - not that Jayden's birthday is an afterthought, but I thought I better blog about it before I forget what happened this weekend. When I took Monday off to spend with Jayden, it was the highlight of my weekend, much liked the time off I took of for JJ's birthday. I asked him what he wanted, and the first thing he said was he wanted Thai tea. How could I not oblige. We shared a large cup on the way to Toys R Us, which was his 2nd request. He insisted he wanted to buy Prowl the Transformer. How does this kid know about Prowl, when I don't really let them watch the show... and he can't even read yet! Well, that was our 2nd stop. Our 3rd stop was to tray and buy Mario Kart... BIG FLOP! It was sold out so I picked up M&M's Kart Racing which I eventually heard just flat out sucks. So I returned it today. His 3rd request was to have lunch at Burger King for some chicken nuggets... Again I didn't want to say no, but we were across the street from McD's. He was happy with the nuggets from there and a happy meal spy gear toy. Our next stop was to meet up with the rest of the family at Jump N Jammin in Arcadia. That was 2 1/2 hours of just jumping and running and all kinds of stuff that would wear out a parent. But who am I to stop the kids from having fun, and they were having lots of it, including Juicy. JJ was all over the place from the video dance floor, do the foam ball cage. Jayden, our b-day boy was even more so. He was nonstop! He even spent quite a bit of time in the jump house. He was so tired, he barely survived the 20 minute ride home for swim class at 6:30. Needless to say, the kids were just about out of gas when they turned in. We were all exhausted, and it started with Jayden's birthday party the day before his birthday and we'll probably be slowly recovering the rest of this week.

JJ, Jayden, Juicy, I'm sorry I wasn't home during the quake. But I'm glad I was able to spend time with you guys this weekend and on Monday. I look forward to being able to do more stuff with you guys. I love you my CuriousGonzos.

Dad