Are you prepared?

With so many natural disasters and other emergencies around the world, especially the fires in California, it makes us more aware of how fragile life can be. How prepared are you if a natural disaster came your way?

When it's time to "Fall Back" or "Spring Forward" an hour, it's also time to check the batteries in your smoke detectors and CO2 detectors, check that your fire extinguishers are still charged, and we do one more thing; we update our 72 hour Emergency Kits.

Last night for Family Home Evening we did just that. Since we have a small house, we've been keeping our kits in our unheated, un-insulated, very unsavory garage. I'm hoping to carve out a little space in the house so we don't have to beat off the spiders if we need to grab them and go.

We (by we I mean Joe and Monkey who did this without asking permission) unloaded everything and then we (by this I mean Andy and I) went through it all and decided what needed replacing, adding, or cleaning, and Natalia made a list of what we need from the store.

The backpacks were thrown in the washer, then all of the clothing. Today new clothes will be replacing the old, outgrown clothes. This is hard to keep up on, since growing is something kids do constantly. I find it helps to pack clothes and shoes that allow a little growing room.

Here is a great checklist from Rachel Woods at lds.about.com to help you get started, or update your existing kit.

I hope we'll never have to use these, but as my Grandma Hall used to say, "Prior planning prevents piss-poor performance!"