Miracle

Every summer Dave and the girls have a camp-out in the backyard. Some years they choose to sleep on the trampoline, others in a tent. School was to start on March 2 and they still hadn't 'gone' camping, so I called Dave at work to suggest that Friday night would be a good night... he told me he was just thinking the exact same thing. The girls chose to sleep in the tent this year.

During the evening we enjoyed tinfoil dinners and smores, then Dave and the girls headed out to the tent with 1 flashlight and a bunch of glow-sticks. They took turns telling stories and eventually fell asleep. I fell asleep in my own bed after an evening of phone conversations and reading.

At 3:34 I woke up to the earthquake. I stayed in bed for a bit, then stood under the doorway to my bathroom for a bit. It kept going, and kept getting stronger. I started to worry that the doorway might not handle all of the shaking, so I ran outside to my family. Once I was safely outside, we started hearing things falling in the house. Glass breaking. Then what sounded like a large piece of furniture falling. The shaking just kept going! Once it finally stopped, I borrowed Dave's slippers so that I could go inside and find some shoes, my glasses, and something more appropriate to wear outside. Glass was crunching under the slippers as I was finding my way to my bedroom. I then felt something big that was blocking me a bit from my room... I felt it and at first thought that it was some kind of pillar, but quickly came to my senses, realizing that we don't have pillars inside of our house. It was a bookshelf that had originally been at the top of the stairs. It is solid wood and quite heavy, and actually broke the stairs.

The staircase that it fell down is the one that connects mine and Dave's bedroom with the girls bedrooms upstairs. Dave and I would have definitely been running upstairs, and there's a good chance that the girls would have been running down to us. If they hadn't been outside, somebody would have been seriously hurt or killed. I am so grateful that Dave and I both received the prompting that Friday night was the night for camping.