We felt the earthquake

The earthquake woke us up. We did not know what it was. A series of knocking sound wake us up. We thought it was the girls knocking on our door. When Bert opened the door and saw no one, he started to follow the sound. It turned out it came from a classic look radio we have placed on our dresser against the wall. It was rattling against the wall and made the noise. Bert said "the wall is shaking". He moved the radio away from the wall and the noise went away. He got back in bed and I started to realize that the bed was shaking too. So I said "it feels like an earthquake". But I did not believe myself so I added "maybe be because you're jumping to the bed". So he joked "so you say that I am so heavy that I cause an earthquake in Michigan?". I ignored him because I know we both were trying to squeeze in a few more minutes of sleep before the alarm went off.

After we got up, we were still amazed by the experience. But we did not know it was a real earthquake until we heard it on the radio on our way to work. 5.5 scale centered from south of Illinois. I told him to put that radio back against the wall again because we may need the noise to wake up if it happens again.

Spring Break

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We had a wonderful trip to Mass during spring break. We packed up the kids in our minivan and drove straight 18 hours. We left home around 8:30 pm Friday night on April 4th. Before heading on the road, we had to do some errands. We stopped the library to drop off some books, went to the bank to get some money, stopped by blockbuster to get some movies, filled up the car and got dinner at the Subway. After about one hour, we were still only one mile away from home!
The drive was really uneventful. Anna and Jenny shared one DVD player with two separate screens. Toby and Joshua watched their movies on their computers. With ear phones plugged, it was quiet except some occasional laughters. We arrived our destination around 4 pm.
The house we rented in Plymouth, MA looked exactly the same as we saw on the photos. It was a beautiful newly renovated old house on the ocean front. The beds were bigger than we expected. The girls shared one bed. The boys each had their own bedrooms. Both ours and the girls bedrooms overlook the ocean. The house had only one drawback - it did not have internet and limited cell phone signals. Joshua and Toby thought they could hack on neighbors' wireless network, but did not find any until the last day when they turned on their computers in the driveway!! We considered ourselves in internet "de-toxi" or "rehab".
The weather was quite good for these 6 days we stayed there. It rained on Sunday, but it did not bother us because we went to visit our good friends Malte/Marcia and Pat/Judy. We enjoyed their food and good conversations. Like every other great moments in our lives, we did not have camera with us that day. We will have to keep all those good memories in our hearts.
We also visited some former Spectro colleagues. We met Dion for breakfast one morning because we did not know we were only less than 10 minutes away from his home in Plymouth. We also visited Kevin and Jeanne Burgess in their home at cape code. Last time we visited them, Callie was not even born yet and Jack was just about one year old. Kids really had great time getting wild at their yard. We hope next time when we visit them, they will have their windmill up and running! Toby and Joshua enjoyed the opportunity logging on the Burgess' wireless network.
We visited MIT and Harvard in Boston and Brown University in Rhodes Island. Joshua was very excited about MIT and did not like Harvard at all while Toby thought Harvard would fit more to his taste. All these three universities seem to be too high to reach, however, visiting them did open their eyes to see what are out there. They know they have to work harder if they want to attend these schools. Meanwhile, we have to think a way to pay for it.