Hey all. I had to post today and share a little story about our experiences here in Cali. So I have been the fan of all fans of Newport Beach and I love it here and if you haven't heard me say it already we hope to be able to come live here after school. We went to the beach last weekend to the US Open surf competition at Huntington Beach and it was awesome. As many people as in NY but they were all in bikini's, or the men didn't have shirts on and everybody had style and actually colored their hair which was totally refreshing for me to see. I have to say I am discovering the whole East Coast West Coast difference that I heard so much about when I got to NY and didn't understand what the heck the difference was or what anyone was talking about. I definitely understand now and have to say I am much more of a West Coast girl. We were walking down this cute little street by the beach and Bryce got so excited and was freaking out cause he saw "Rampage" (Quinton Jackson) who is an Ultimate Fighter, if your anything like me you don't have any idea who that is and could care less but he was stoked! We saw some skating competitions going on while we were there, BMX biking (which was really cool to see) and they had a bunch of bands playing all over the beaches, tons of surf and skate companies that had tents up and were giving out tonz of stuff. X-game sport professionals signing autographs all over. Averie loved it too. I have to say I have never been to a beach that had such big waves, I thought it looked quite scary to swim in. We went to the Orange county fair on Friday night that was fun and a lot of cool stuff there. So the big story of the week.........brace yourselves, this is a scary story. Averie and I go swimming most mornings and we were out at the pool. I was sitting on the steps of the pool with my feet in the water talking to my friend Natalie who lives in NY (in Oregon for the summer on an internship) but is originally from LA. It was 11:40 am and we were having this intense conversation about hypnobirthing and Averie is sitting on the steps of the pool in the water. I start noticing as I am telling my friend a story that the ground under my butt was shaking and I looked up to see if the ground keepers were pushing some large Machinery around that was making the ground vibrate. All of the sudden the whole ground under my butt was completely shaking like jello which was the weirdest feeling I have ever experienced. By the time I realized what had happened it was over and I grabbed Averie and jumped out of the pool and told my friend, I have to go and call Bryce, we just had an EARTHQUAKE! She being from LA had been in several and said make sure you get to somewhere safe because it could be a pre shock or what ever you call it. Bryce had actually just called me on the other line like 2 seconds before the earthquake and I didn't answer because I figured I would call him back in a few minutes. So I am sitting there trying to call him and my phone wouldn't dial out. It was like it was frozen and I had a full signal so I knew the circuits must all be busy with everyone calling each other. I couldn't get a hold of anyone for like 10 minutes and was about to freak out because I didn't dare to go back to my apartment. It seemed pretty safe for me to be out in the open. So finally I get a hold of my dad and he had to call Bryce for me and tell him to come get me from the pool when he left work for lunch but I couldn't talk to Bryce. I started realizing how important it is to have a plan to meet your family somewhere when something like that happens. When Bryce came to get me he said it felt like his building dropped like 5 feet and heard a huge thud then the building swayed for like 5 minutes after. It only lasted a few seconds but it was crazy and a lot of people he works with said they hadn't actually felt an earthquake before and they had lived here for several years. Perfect timing for us hu, 5.4 on the richter scale and freaked us out. To go back to what I was saying at the beginning of the post about how I love living here.......I was just telling my sister in law Rachel yesterday that I can't find a single thing to complain about since I had been here and it is the PERFECT place to live. Well it didn't take but a day to knock that statement out into the field. Okay, so there is one thing wrong with California. Natural Disasters, ie 5.4 earthquakes. Anyway, it was quite the event and I feel like I am truly gaining some serious experiences in these few years of Bryce's schooling but we are fine and there has been no reported injuries and only 1 large water line broke that is getting taken care of but they said it was felt all the way in Las Vegas and Mexico. I hope we find you all well and you aren't experiencing any natural disasters in your areas of the world. Love you all The Waters
