Shaken Up!

 Most of you probably don't know, but, on December 27th  around 11:00pm as the boys slept and we were getting ready for bed, we had a pretty serious earthquake here (6.6 on the Richter scale).

Is started with a loud rumbling outside (sounded like a semi truck right outside our window) and then, all of the sudden the apartment started shaking, and then rocking back and forth.  We ran into the boys room, grabbed them in their blankets, threw on our coats, and ran down 8 floors to outside where we joined other people who had the same idea.  

The rumbling had stopped by the time we got outside but we didn't want to go back in since we weren't sure it was over.  After about 40 minutes outside, Jesse and I decided it was OK to go back in (the fact that is was -30 and we didn't have our regular clothes on and the boys only had the blankets around them helped in making that decision).  

There have been several strong aftershocks ranging from 4-5 on the Richter scale. Once we went back inside, we got our things and spent the first night at our office since it's in a 4-story brick building versus our apartment building which is 9 stories and made of concrete.  As you can imagine the buildings here are not built for such things, since an earthquake that strong has never happened here before.

We are all OK, if a little shaken up (hehehe).  Several teams have been going around to check buildings for damage.  I read somewhere that they found 31 buildings with enough damage to evacuate.  I'm not sure how true that is so I can't confirm or deny it.  Our building is fine and there are only 2 minor cracks in our apartment (not serious).
 

But, we survived and we didn't lose anything.  The aftershocks have stopped for the most part and life is back on track.  Thank you for those who knew about this already and thought for us.