Are you prepared? We weren't....

In July the Brady Bunch crew moved from Seattle, WA are back to Alabama. While we search for housing arrangements in Dothan, we have been staying at the Residence Inn and our belongings, minus what we could cram into the suburban is still sitting in storage in Seattle.

On August 21st Tropical Depression Isaac decided it wanted to come and visit  the Gulf of Mexico and gradually grew into a Tropical Storm. Initially the prediction was that Isaac would become a category 1-2 hurricane and would hit South Florida and then head towards Dothan. Thankfully, Joey, Jordyn, and Jayson were already back with their mom in Loxley, AL and  Jarom and MyKayla flew back to Salt Lake City on Friday, August 24th, so 5 out of 6 kids were out of the predicted 'harms way'.

Late Saturday afternoon, Eric and I decided we needed to set some sort of plan in place on what we were going to do if Isaac remained on the above course. After speaking with the hotel staff, we found out they planned to stay open unless a mandatory evacuation was ordered,  and as long as they had power and supplies, they would accommodate the guests who remained in the hotel as best they could, but they highly suggested to stock up on basic supplies. 

So here is our catch-22, in storage...in SEATTLE, I have flashlights, lanterns, tents, sleeping bags, first aid kits, cooking stoves, and non-perishable food galore. Because we can't store certain items, 7 or so bottles of propane went to my parents house and our lovely neighbors inherited our large propane tank, but my point is, we were pretty much prepared if anything were to come our way. Now that we are living in a hotel we have pretty much nothing except a handful of our bedding, a few containers of bandaids, and a bottle of rubbing alcohol (cause that couldn't go in storage either). If the power didn't go out in the storm we have a crock pot, a two-burner stove, and a microwave for cooking, plus the hotel would continue to serve breakfast as long as they had food to cook.

Needless to say, we headed to the store to grab some water and food. Half of the shoppers just laughed at everyone as they stocked up and the other half were grabbing what they could. Since we have the dilemma of possibly not having the ability to cook anything if the power goes out, we chose to focus our purchase on items that didn't need to be cooked. These are the items we chose to buy:

• Water (3 cases)
• Tuna fish
• Vienna sausages (grosses me out but if you're in need of food, I guess you might eat anything!)
• Pop tarts
• Granola bars/ trail mix bars/ protein bars
• Saltine crackers
• Pretzels
• Peanut butter crackers
• Graham crackers

Stuff we already had on hand that if we hadn't had, we would have bought:

• Bread
• Peanut butter
• Nuts - various kinds
• Fruit snacks
• Koolaid single packs (you just pour them in your bottled water)
• Fruit
• Paper products: toilet paper, paper towels, napkins, paper towels, plastic silverware

On Sunday, Isaac changed paths and we are now out of harms way. Some people told us we were wasting our money by stocking up on supplies, but overall that was the most comforting $50 I spent since being back in Alabama. This experience has made me question if my stuff in storage is enough if we were to find ourselves in another emergency situation. While searching the internet for additional ideas for food storage items I came across www.pgward.org, which has a weekly purchasing plan for food storage. Their site has a basic printable sheet or a downloadable excel document in which you can input the number of family members and it will recalculate the amount of each item you need. Below is a copy of their printable document.