Things to do before a Hurricane

Since Hurricane Ike was heading our way, we were doing our typical Hurricane "to do list" as we watched the weather channel 24-7 and wondered if it really would come or if we would get lucky again (like Rita) and it would miss us....unfortunately with Rita, it missed us and made a b-line for my sister's town and did a number on Nacogdoches! I woke up at 1:30am on Saturday morning and was on hurricane/tornado/bad storm watch most of the night. It was still hours away, I think it made landfall in Galveston at 2:10am, but I wanted to be sure I knew where he was going and if he was heading our way. At the time, he was....but he veered a little more eastward as he got closer so we were only hit with the outer band on the west side which was the better or lesser side of the hurricane. Hurricanes are no fun...I couldn't believe that 40% of Galveston did not evacuate...I can't imagine why they didn't leave.

Anyway, we were among the lucky ones. When the weather channel showed pictured of our town, it was just a few downed trees and fences, nothing major. But people within just an hour or so from us lost much more....my heart bleeds for them and I hope they can find peace during this terrible time.

So...here is our prep....you have to get everything out of your yard and off your porch...or it may become a flying object!


These are our 72 hour backpacks....enough food water, general supplies to keep us going for 72 hours...we had them out and ready to go just in case.

This is my son...isn't he cute! He thought going through our 72 hour kits was fun and he liked the playing with Winnie the Pooh and sitting on his pillow that was in his backpack. Its always good to have things for the kids to play with in their backpacks, we had this bear and a few other toys...toys that he has probably outgrown and we realize we need to replace, but he still thought they were fun for a good 15 minutes on Friday!
This is all my fresh fruit and veggies..I washed it and made sure it was ready to eat in case we lost water.
This is some spare bottled water. I keep all the gazillion juice bottles we go through and store them for a day like this, when I fill them up with water so that if we loose power and utitlities in general, we will still have water.
The last part is easy---watch the weather and pray a lot!

We made it through without a scratch this time, for that we are very thankful. However, hurricane season still has 2 more months left so you never know when the next one will have your name on it. Luckily, we are far enough inland where we usually just get wind and rain, but sometimes they retain strength, like Rita did, and wreak havoc on into the interior of the state. I think we had something like 50 mile and hour winds and lots of rain. We did loose power for an hour but that is nothing.

I have friends in Houston and more south that don't have electricity and may not for a month....their jobs are in question and their neighbors homes may be gone...so I pray for them all!

I hope you are all safe and doing well! God be with you!