vacation & preparedness...

Our family recently came home from a much-anticipated vacation to Washington D.C.!
Little Man's teacher spent a lot of time with her class studying our nation's monuments and memorials. Those lessons really fueled his desire to see them...we agreed it was a terrific idea!

As we prepared to leave, we knew storms were coming, but that's nothing new this time of year...the heat and humidity here often bring strong thunderstorms. Packed and ready to go we headed out, knowing neighbors & friends were keeping an eye on our home and animals.
As we drove, we found ourselves traveling under or just barely ahead of the storms. 

Photo taken as we were driving.

After a few hours on the road, we began receiving text messages about the damage in our hometown. Many homes had trees down and power outages were widespread. With heat at or above 100 degrees, it was a difficult time for many families.

Although a tarp is covering the front of the home on the left,
a day earlier, it appeared as a dollhouse...a tree had taken off the
front and we could see inside the rooms.

Neighbors checked on our home, and we had only two large limbs down. One had fallen beside our home, the second one was at the edge of our backyard...we were fortunate, no damage was done. We were keeping in touch with friends, and while we considered returning home, we were almost to D.C., and so decided to continue traveling. 

Once there, we found our nation's capital had an estimated 3 million people without power. Within a few days, gas stations were out of gas, stores were without ice and running low on food. We were fortunate...our hotel was one of the the few with power, and so we were comfortable and able to enjoy our time there.

And while we had a terrific vacation, visiting sites that made us pause and think...

pondering the beauty of the earth...

and discovering sites that made us smile,

traveling home, I began to think about our family's preparedness...food & water storage,
light sources, our generator & chainsaw, etc. Once home, it would be wise to inventory our supplies again and make sure our equipment was in working order. We were fortunate, our power was back on in 3 days, and we came home needing only to clean out the fridge, cut and move tree limbs...that's not so bad.

Yesterday is was 80 degrees at 7 a.m. and 96 degrees at 8 p.m. as Sweet Girl and I left our local feed store. It's not even August yet...typically our hottest time of year.

And so, what's the point in this long post? Well, I'm going to pull my information together and have a weekly preparedness post...I'll share with you what I have learned over the years,
what works for us, and ask you to share your ideas as well.

These words seem truer than ever...

“The little gardens and a few trees are very valuable.
I remember when the sisters used to say,
`well, but we could buy it at the store a lot cheaper than we could put it up.’
But that isn’t quite the answer, is it?
Because there will become a time when there isn’t a store.”

- Spencer W. Kimball