Earthquake

It's a good thing that Carlos' mom gave me a gift certificate for a pedicure because yesterday I walked barefoot from the WWII Memorial. That's 1.6 miles on top of another 1.5 miles in heels. I am rarely out of my home office, but the only earthquake to occur in 100 years happened during a work lunch...on the other side of town! After surfacing from a basement level restaurant in search of a coffee shop where I could take a conference call I was shocked to see crowded streets due to evacuated buildings. It wasn't a big earthquake but everyone evacuated. The phone sporadically worked, but for the most part I couldn't make a call including to find out if the kids were okay. The walk was an interesting way to witness the city after a disaster. People were hanging out outside their offices - some telling terrible stories like "I passed a woman in the stairs having a heart attack" and others annoyed that they couldn't get their car out to go home. The monuments were closed and the capitol police barked at me if I crossed the street towards any of them.

Apparently Charlie was eating Cheerios when it happened and our poor substitute nanny grabbed both kids and ran outside. I finally was able to get through the house phone and 1 minute into our conversation she told me a man wanted to speak to me. It turned out to be a friend from the capitol needing a landline and a bathroom. We should have set up Charlie's food truck and lemonade stand - we would have made a killing as there was a captive audience roaming all over our street!

I made it home to find Charlie asleep on the coach. He re-told the story to grandma and it went something like "I was eating cereal and the house started to move and then it went boom-boom."

We had an exciting weekend too. Charlie, Diego and I drove to New Haven to see Seth start his MBA program and to see my grandparents. We had such a fun time and Charlie is certainly turning into my little buddy. The house is on the shore and Charlie and Diego finally found a beach they liked - full of rocks! Charlie attempted to single-handedly displace all of the rocks. It's a tough job, but he made a good attempt. We also took a walk across the marsh that we used to take when I was little. I remember it being such a long journey when I was little and was shocked to find how short it was when I was older. But this time around it was just as long as I remember as a kid. We only got 60% of the way across before turning back and by the end I had to carry both kids. We got to see where Seth is living and re-visit some of my favorite coffee shops around Yale's campus. The 7 hour drive each way was long, but totally worth it. Charlie stayed up late singing along to the music. Poor Diego was a little pissed off to have to sleep with music blasting but he survived.