It took an earthquake to get my teenagers out of bed last Wednesday morning...literally!
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I'd opened some curtains and made noises upstairs about starting the day, but only when the puppies went berserk and an invisible force was insistently knocking at the front door did the reality of an earthquake provide the incentive for my girls to leave their swaying beds, stagger downstairs and head out into the garden with me.
When you're on a small planet spinning around the sun and the whole ground moves under you, considering the precariousness of your existence becomes unavoidable.
I was terrified in a gob smacked 'how awesome is my God?!' kind of way.
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When you know that the number of fine-tuned characteristics necessary for life on a planet is 150, and that means Earth has beat the odds of one in ten to the seventy-third power - that's one followed by seventy-three zeros - you take careful note when the whole thing starts to wobble.
Daddy was in his office thinking he might have finally popped too many painkiller pills for his cracked rib when the curtains started moving without a breeze and our university student immediately messaged to say that all the windows were rattling in the large old Melbourne home in which she lives.
We girls couldn't help thinking what it would have been like if the earthquake arrived a day earlier for us.
Rather than lounging around the house the day before, we'd left home at 6.30am to frolic in the snow on Mt William for a couple of hours.
It was a beautiful fairyland of powder light fine pure white snow and we seemed to have the whole magical place to ourselves.
There were snowballs thrown, snowmen built and fingers nearly frozen.
Fancy finding shivering snow less than an hour from home?
Tremendous!
We did note a few fallen rocks in a landscape of incredible colour and beauty on our way back down the mountain.
I hope nothing major moved during the shaking.
We really hit the jackpot for breakfast when we made it into a restaurant 'packed' with seven other lucky diners.
The girls googled yodeling courses on the drive home and we sang the whole way.
So far, school holidays really rock...and are quite rocky!