Mar 11
Everyone,
With Japan’s recent earthquake and tsunamis around the world, I have been thinking a lot about my family’s emergency preparedness. What do you need to be prepared for an emergency? A few different websites have different ideas. Here are the top ideas to be prepared for an emergency:
1. Have enough food and water for your family for at least 3 days. Commonly called 72 hour kits, these are handy when you need to dash out of your house. Have them stocked, and easily accessible. Include any special needs your family might have, and your pets! Take extra water and food for them. (And know that a lot of evacuation shelters will not accept pets.)
2. Have a plan. Live far from work? Where will you go if the city is evacuated? Where will you meet your family? What if the area is completely evacuated? Where will you go? Have clear and specific routes that you and your family will take. Have a final destination, one preferably out of your area.
3. Know what your work and school evacuation policy is. Does your work want you to check out with a supervisor before you leave and tell them where you are going? Will they hold the kids at school until you get to them? What if you can’t reach them? Decide who will be able to pick up your kids if you can’t make it. I listed a few neighbors to pick up Butterfly at her school, and then my parents who live in Utah.
4. Plan for small home emergencies as well. Have a fire route and practice it with your kids. Discuss who will go where and where the family would meet. My in-laws gave us a fire ladder to use on our two story house. I keep it under Butterfly’s bed in the kids’ room. You have no idea how reasuring it is to see that yellow bundle every time I go looking for toys lost under the bed. I know that if I can make it to the kids’ room, I can make it safely out of the house. When we move the boys to their own room, I intend to purchace a second one to put in there.
5. Have out of town contacts. Sometimes, when phones are down in your area, it would be easier to contact someone out of town. Memorize numbers, and make sure you can reach them. In your 72 hour kits, include these numbers and a prepaid phone card or change to make the call. Check with your out of town contact to see if they would be willing to accept a collect call.
In the end, you just need to prepare for the worst, and everything else will be easy. My worst? In my head it involves us throwing the kids, the dog, and as many supplies as we could get (including the stroller and the wagon) into our van (ditching the two captian chairs that we don’t use) and driving as far west as our gas will take us. Then, we will run out of gas, load up the stroller with the kids, the wagon with our supplies, and walk to Utah. Like pioneer refugees.
In all honesty, the worst we will see here (hopefully) is an extended power outage or perhaps an evacuation for a hurricane. We have been preparing for a power outage here. I can boil water over fire, and cook in my dutch ovens. I can also start a fire, and have a safe place to have said fire. We have water. We have some food. We’ve been discussing where to go if we are evacuated and trying to find someplace a little closer than Utah to head.
My next goal? Those 72 hour kits!
What are your preparedness goals? Anything I forgot on my list?
Safire
Safireplanning, storms, weather emergancy preparedness, planning
Jun 07
Everyone,
It’s been a whirlwind week for us. My parents have been visiting all week and left to go home this afternoon. This has also been a week-of-serious-car-buying. Yes, you read right. We are buying a car. Bought. Van. We bought a van on Tuesday. Okay so it wasn’t a week of car buying. Only two days of it. It felt like a week though. My dad and I furiously rushed around the local car places in hour and a half increments throughout the days. That was as long as the boys could go between feedings. I felt bad for my mom and Flower the last day because both boys were inconsolable towards the end. They did very good and allowed us to find a great car. Van. I mean van.
Butterfly wants to name the van Sally or Lightning McQueen. “Or we could call it Chick because it’s green! And Chick is green!” Our van is green. I’m leaning towards calling the van Fern but Butterfly won’t let me. Anyway, for all you car people, the van is a 2004 Kia Sedona with 14,000 miles on it. The miles were right. The size was a bit small but we can fit all the kids and us in it plus one. It does have a dvd player in it. The price was excellent. We were able to buy it out right. I love not having a car payment!
I also love having doors that slide so I don’t have to worry about hitting other cars with them. I love being able to unlock the doors from a key chain. (A funny story about that. Our friend Julien came to visit about a month ago and said he needed to check if he locked the doors of his rental car. He walked outside, took about 5 steps, and walked back inside. Juice asked him if he could see from there if it was locked or if he had a cool key chain thing. Julien said, “Juice, everyone but you has a cool key chain thing.” It was so true. And now we have one! Sweet!) I love that I can fit my strollers in the back (although I do have to take the wheels off). And I love that now we can actually go somewhere with everyone, including Flower. Yay for space!
So, all day Monday and Tuesday I spent driving cars. Wednesday we drove to the mall and got the kids’ pictures taken. (Super cute, email me for the password if you want to see.) And then we spent 3 hours trying to get home. There was a huge storm (go here for a video of it). It downed trees all over the area. And of course, we were trying to get home through the back roads. Which had more downed trees and downed power lines. We had to stop twice to feed the babies. (Once in front of our bishop’s house where a tree had smashed a car and their roof! No one got hurt thank goodness.) I had been in touch with Juice and we still had power but a lot of people didn’t in the area. It was nice to finally get home.
On Friday, our good friends who moved away to St. Louis, came to visit. We had a great time with them! And it just confirmed to me that boys will never grow up because Juice and Juilen spent the morning shooting each other with foam guns and missiles. Never mind that the kids wanted to play too! I really miss them and it was fun to have a morning to connect again.
I feel like we have been moving all day, every day. Add on to that taking care of the twins and Butterfly (could not have been done without Flower!), I am exhausted. But this is just the beginning of summer for me. And I love it!
Safire
PS- All local gals, we are invited to swim at the bishop’s kiddie pool on Tuesday at 10am! Hope to see you there.
Safirefamily visiting, friends, new van, storms
