Hurricane Prep

I honestly quit watching the news shortly after Miller was born. The topics consisted of traffic fatalities, murders, and hurricanes. You can toss in sports for good measure too but I never listen to that part anyways. To add to the list, the South Florida news stations love a good tropical storm/hurricane to sensationalize.

With that in mind, I just waited for my fellow storm trackers to keep me updated. Now that Kevin has removed himself from that role; I depend on FB to keep me updated. This week I started to see the all too familiar "hurricane model" pictures start to appear. I figured I should probably check it out to see what the scoop is.

For the last couple days, it was clearly a tropical storm headed our way with the possibility of being a category 1 hurricane. That's really just a bad storm with more wind than usual in my opinion. We have had far worse thunderstorms roll through. The models constantly change but I know we will get hit with something.

It's been weighing on my mind that we depleted our hurricane stash many years ago and have never replenished it. All we really kept was some water, batteries, and a lantern or some extra candles but gosh darn it, once that power goes out, no one wants to be scrambling in the attic (and by no one I mean Ryan) to find something.

With Mason and Miller around to ride out this storm; I figured I should get a few things today. Mainly water since we had none. I don't do the full 1 gallon per person per day for at least 3 days calculation. I can always boil water for washing up and I know I certainly don't drink a gallon a day (hello beer, wine, and Dt. Coke). Plus, we will have pool water for flushing toilets if needed.

What we really needed was diapers and toilet paper. My thought was if we ran low or out and the storm did hit, I certainly wasn't going to go looking for a store that carries those things. I headed to Sam's Club to get the needed items and was shocked at how many people were already stockpiling water! They had pallets down most aisles and were pulling more out of the back as I grabbed a couple cases. Good thing I got gas on Tuesday or that's the next chaotic thing people hoard.

We are more than ready for the storm on the food/water/supplies front. The thing that always makes me nervous is whether or not to pull the outdoor stuff inside. It's a pain to move and you don't realize how much stuff you have until it's time to move it. I am hoping we don't go into a hurricane warning and need to shuffle all the outdoor stuff to the garage.

I have a list a mile long of things to get done this weekend before Mason's birthday party next week. I really don't want to shift my energy into storm preparation mode.