WE WILL BE STARVING, BUT KAIA WILL LOOK CUTE!

For Family Home Evening last night I planned a fun lesson/activity about being prepared. With the recent hurricanes in Texas and the fact that we live on an earthquake fault line I thought it would be appropriate to see how prepared our family would be if we were faced with an emergency.

We sang our opening song, Blake gave our very long opening prayer and then I started the lesson. I started talking about recent disasters that people have had to live through...Hurricane Katrina, the Tsunami and most recently the hurricanes in Texas. I told our children that some people in emergency situations have a couple of days of warning to prepare, but others have only minutes. I talked about how some people have police officers or firefighters come to their door and tell them they need to leave their home now and to grab whatever personal belongings they would need for 3 days or so. I then said, to the surprise of my whole family (yes, even Hubs) as I jumped up and ran to the microwave, that this is a drill. I continued to tell them that we have been told, along with other families in the area that we were to evacuate our home immediately and grab whatever provisions we would need for approximately 3 days and meet at the church meetinghouse. I set the timer for 3 minutes and everyone started running and yelling through the house. I was yelling orders to Blake because he needed some direction and help. Dave was yelling to me asking where the water jugs were that had been in the garage. I yelled back that I just put them in the car. I then yelled, "did you grab the flashlight?" and he yelled back "got it!" It was exciting and panicky all at the same time. When the timer went off, everyone had to stop where they were and bring the last things that were in their hands to the car. I quickly grabbed my cell phone, purse and one scrapbook as we walked out the door.

The kids were already in the car and when we got in they were buckled and I could hear Kaia comforting Blake and explaining that nothing was really going to happen to our house but that we were just practicing. (Poor guy was a little confused.)

I had arranged with the Murdock family to join us in this activity and it was really fun to pull into the church parking lot and wait for another family to join us. As they pulled into the parking lot the kids were overcome with excitement and nerves about what we had for three days. This is what we had.

We had a few blankets and two pillows (mommy and kaia grabbed their pillows)and daddy grabbed a lighter to be able to start a fire to keep us warm if needs be. Blake had grabbed his blanket and all his medical supplies, but needed to be reminded to grab clothes and a sweatshirt. I grabbed our envelope with cash in it...but it was empty! We did have a full tank of gas though.

We had two jugs of water, a case of granola bars, a few bags of trail mix and two packages of top ramen. We will be starving!

The Murdocks on the other hand will be in better shape food wise. They all have 72 hour kit backpacks ready and hanging on their garage wall which they grabbed. The only problem was some of the food was bad and the clothes in the backpacks were too small for the girls!

Makenzie looks like she will be ready for the floods!

Kaia on the other hand packed half her dresser. She had her robe, 3 pair of jeans, 3 pair of shorts, tennis shoes and flip flops and about 20 t-shirts...no kidding.

Nellie was a close second to Kaia in the clothing department, but her sister Sarah lost, she only grabbed 1 pair of underwear!

I changed into my tennis shoes before leaving so as to have on proper attire.

We all had a great time. We talked about what we had and what we all need to get. Becky and I decided that between the two families we would probably survive the three days, but would not be comfortable! The kids thought it was the greatest Family Home Evening EVER and we ended it with frozen yogurt for dessert.




It was Yummy and a fun evening was had by ALL!