Wimpy snow storms and earthquakes

Well, the "big snow storm" we were suppose to have last night sputtered out...again.
Since we've moved here, we haven't really had much snow to speak of.

I'm not complaining, mind you.
But the kids hate it when all their friends are having snow days back in Kzoo and they have to go to school. Makes it hard for them to not miss Michigan on those mornings.

But I am starting to understand the "looks" and comments I got from some of the neighbors when they saw my snow blower from Michigan. "Wow. That's a really big snow blower you have there."

They all have these wimpy little blowers that are about 12 inches wide and sound like they run on the motor of a toy remote car.

We have a man size snow blower. You know, Troy-Bilt, Briggs and Stratton 9.5 horse power, 5 speed and 2 speed reverse, 26 inch auger. It's huge. Even has head lights (that's what I always tell people because I really don't know much about motors and such...head lights, now that's impressive!)

I feel like Tim Taylor when I use it. Tempted to make one of his husky "oh oh oh" noises and then point it over at my neighbors driveway and bury them.

But I've only used it once since we've been here. I actually like the peace and quiet of shoveling once and a while, especially when there's only a little snow.

The big news around here is the earthquake we had this morning at 4:00 am. The epicenter was less than 10 miles from us and it was a 3.8 (this has all been revised since this morning- originally they said 4.3).

All I know is that it scared the living day lights out of all of us.

I was asleep on the couch downstairs with Ace (long story, he's being a bit of a bad puppy) when the whole house started shaking. There was this deep rumbling noise and Ace was running in circles barking. It lasted about 5 to 10 seconds, enough for me to run around the house while things were shaking all around me, look outside, and then run upstairs. Hubby said "what the heck was that?" we couldn't believe it would be an earthquake. Earthquakes in Illinois? Whoever heard of such a thing.

One of our cats came from Tony's room into our bedroom. His tail was huge and all the hair on his back was standing up straight. It took me a while to find the other cat this morning. He was hiding in between some moving boxes in the basement. Poor guy.

Ace did the same barking running in circles at about 5:30 am again. The news said we probably wouldn't feel any aftershocks but I'm wondering if Ace did.

There were some pretty interesting stories on the Chicago News this morning from people saying their animals alerted them before the quake actually hit. Everything from dogs to cats to birds.

I wasn't sure if it woke the kids or not. None of them came out of their rooms but when I went to wake them up for school Bud rolls over, puts the pillow over his head and says "I'm tired, that earthquake kept me awake last night."

Like we had ten of them last night and it's nothing new to him.
Mac jumped up and said "was that an earthquake at 4 am?" and Tony said "my bed was banging against the wall and I thought it was the puppy".

I'm still shocked that none of them came out of their rooms, scared.
As for me, I made the Hubby hold me tight and fought the urge to go get all my babies and bring them into our bed (yeah I know they are all grown up size) and I really wanted Nae there.

I guess that's a mom thing.