We unpacked for a couple weeks, prepared for hurricane Gustav, unpacked for another week, then prepared for hurricane Ike. It was an interesting welcome to Louisiana. We were very fortunate to not suffer any damage to our property. We are happy to be on a little hill with the trees set away from our house.
I heard some great tips from people in town. I cooked up all the frozen meat before the storm and put meals into containers so we could grab it from the cooler and eat it cold without any preparation. We filled up the bathtubs to have water for sponge baths and flushing toilets. We brought into the garage all patio furniture and outside toys. We did all the laundry and cleaning before the storm hit. All the lessons from church on preparedness really hit home. (see http://www.providentliving.org/) We had cases of water bottles and shelves of food storage, cash on hand, and full tanks of gasoline. We actually felt prepared. We had been looking at grills and thought it was a good time to get one. I really like the side burner feature for "stove top" cooking. We even managed to get some in-short-supply propane in time for Ike.
For each storm Ben had to stay at work so the kids and I made a camp-out out of it. They slept in my closet with flashlights and had a grand time. Luckily we never lost our water supply. (The water company learned from hurricane Rita and now has generators for the water pumps). Our power went out for less than a day for each of the storms. Just long enough to justify finishing off all the ice-cream before it melted.
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4 comments:
Steph,
I was wanting to hear your storm stories, thanks for sharing! Glad you were fine. What great memories we have from this summer, so glad we could see you all. Heidi still talks about "the cousins" and especially remembers Chase and Fiona. Give our love to Ben and the kids.
-Sarah
Your home is beautiful! Thanks for sharing the pictures and stories.
Oh yikes, I am NOT a fan of winter storms! Or autumn, whichever. I didn't realize you all were so close to those two storms. I'm sure you'll get some interesting weather there. Thanks for the great emergency preparedness tips--windstorms are our biggest problem here b/c of all the towering trees!
Reminds me of our hurricanes in Florida. Isn't it fun? We're so glad that we don't have to worry about them anymore here in Utah.
I'm glad your family stayed safe. It sounds like you got the same good advice we got. Here's another good tip, if you have an extra freezer. Before the storms, we take everything from the inside freezer and put it in the chest freezer. Any extra space, we fill with containers full of water. Then we turn the freezer up as high as it will go. Even if we lose power for a while, the full freezer stays frozen longer than a half empty one. Now that my freezers are both pretty full, I think I'd just put water bottles in the empty space in both. It's nice to have the cold water later, too.
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