tsunami!

there is nothing quite like being woken up to the sound of emergency sirens to really get your blood pumping.....that was my alarm clock saturday morning. i have heard the sirens before--they test them on the first day of each month at about 11:45am. so when i heard these at what i could only guess was way too early in the morning, i popped out of bed. actually first i heard my phones text message alert early in the morning, which is normal and why i keep it down stairs....but when i started hearing what i thought was an alarm clock i really started to wake up. i hit josh and said " ummm....its not the 1st and its not 11:45.....holy crap thats the tsunami sirens!" needless to say we both quickly got up turned on the tv, got dressed, and then headed downstairs to check our phones. josh had a few missed calls and mine was ringing. josh got in touch with people from work and had to go in for a bit to help move equipment, i was talking to my mom trying to figure out what was going on, and then we really started getting stuff together. luckily we are in a really good area inland, and kind of up some hills and stuff.....we actually live inside of an old volcano crater that is obviously inactive and has been for a long long time. and the community center by where we live is actually josh's recall location. so we are good. but one of the things we did do when we first got here was put together an emergency kit just in case something like this happened. towels, sheets, canned foods, water, pasta packs, and we keep josh's camping gear handy in the garage. with josh out of the house within 15 minutes of the sirens going off, i was filling up water in all of our extra containers, bath tubs, and freezing extra water bottles. and by the time josh got home around 9 i was baking my second batch of muffins. the biggest worry in our area wasnt the water..it was the losing power thing. so since baking helps calm me and helps with extra food just in case, it was a win win situation. one of the guys josh works with was in an evacuation zone, so he just followed josh back to our house. and then we decided to invite a few more friends over and just grill out.... so we went to the little mini-mart and got the important things....beer...and lots of it, at least if the power goes out we have the essentials. and then it was time to wait....and wait...and wait...i dont think i have watched the news that much in our whole year and half here. and while nothing really big ever happened you could definitely see the changes in the water and the current of the water as it was being pulled back into the sea. i always think its better to be safe than sorry....if a small child had been in the water as it was rushing back out, i could easily see something happening. either way people are going to complain, either too much precaution is taken and people whine and complain because they were inside all morning, or not enough is taken and someone gets hurt and then everyone whines because there wasnt enough done. after seeing the damage that happened in american samoa and josh going there to see the damage and destruction first hand....i am more than happy to spend the morning with friends and family and hang out.

the muffins i made were the peanut butter and jelly ones that i have made before, but i made them a little different. i didnt add the jelly into the actual muffin batter while they were baking, i used my pan that has the silicone tips and added the jelly in the center after they were done baking. i also used brown sugar on the top instead of regular sugar. the recipe i used is from the back of the pilsbury flour bag. i didnt really take a whole lot of pictures of these since 1 i was in a tsunami warning and 2 i have made these before, just not this way. they are very tasty :)