On Being Prepared

Turns out we're not.

So tonight we lost power. It was super windy, the snow was horizontal, the lights flickered, and it was out. Luckily Chris was home and we used our cell phones and ipod to make our way to the closet where we keep our flashlights. I pulled down the basket they were in, and got them down only to discover they all had dead batteries and we didn't have any spares. We did have a crank emergency flashlight we used to steal half dead batteries out of Benson's swing. So instead of waiting it out, we decided we needed to buy a generator. This is the 2nd time this has happened to us, and we have been sorely unprepared each time. We got everyone ready, and then Addie managed to break our emergency flashlight. Awesome.

We braved the weather and drove to Cabelas only to discover they closed at 8. Double awesome. Lucky for us we got to Home Depot with 10 min to spare before closing. Chris got a generator, me and the kids ran into Walmart for more flashlights and batteries--we are definitely the epitome of how not to prepare for an emergency! We got home, Chris manually opened the garage door, Addie, Benson, and I had our hand on the door to the house and the power turned on. Triple awesome.

On the bright side, we are now the proud owners of a small generator 4 new flashlights and 18 size D batteries--next time we should be more prepared, and at least we were warm and in a well-lit place during the outage--on the bummer side our cable went out so we missed the season premier of Survivor (thank goodness for Itunes) and our kids didn't go to bed until 10. Moral of the story--follow the Scout motto and Be Prepared. ps. I think I'll rotate our emergency kits this weekend--it's been 3 years!