Prepping!

Last week we tried an experiment with our family.  It might sound hard, some might ask why, all I can say is sometimes you need to do hard things.

But…I am getting ahead of myself.  Let me go back to the beginning. 

We are a homeschool family, with four children ages 14, 13, 8, and 5.  Homeschooling is not anything we had ever planned.  We did not start out our children’s education on a homeschool plan.  It is just one of those things that kind of happened.  It felt right at the time, when our oldest was struggling in 4th grade.  We pulled both girls out of school, and this has been our journey ever since.  It is not glamorous, it is not easy, and there are many  most days when the house looks like something blew up. 

So, let me get back to our experiment.  Our two oldest girls are students of Williamsburg Academy, an online middle school/high school program.  This is our second year with Williamsburg and I love their program.  Samantha is our 13 year old.  In her STEM class this semester they are focusing on natural disasters.  Her focus has been on studying natural disasters that could happen to us in Kodiak, Alaska.  We are an island in the Alaska Gulf, and are part of the ring of fire; a ring of volcanoes circling the Pacific Ocean.  As such, volcanic activity and earthquakes are a real threat.  With each of these also brings the threat of a tsunami, which has already devastated the island back in 1964.  As a family we have been learning along with Sam; not only about what happened in 1964, but how we can protect our selves if it were to happen again.  For the past couple of months she has created a video presentation, written down our family emergency plan, and helped to assemble our emergency kits.  In these 72 hour kits, there is food and water to last for three days, flashlights, extra clothing, first aid, fire starter, rain gear, and anything else we thought might be needed.  If you have not assembled an emergency kit, there are many places that can give you a good place to start.  You can even find kits at Walmart and Costco.  Emergency Essentials is also a great place to start for info or to order a premade kit.    We started with this basic kit and added on from there.

That brings us to last week.  Last week was midterms, and for her midterm project we had to do a natural disaster simulation.  The kids all knew this was coming, but our instructions as parents was to keep the details and time of the simulation a secret.  I had shared what we were planning with a few other people, including our bishop.  Emergency preparedness is also something that has been on his mind, and he asked us to extend our simulation.  So on Monday morning we were given the details; to simulate that an earthquake had hit Kodiak Island at 4:09 am, and all commerce is shut down.  There would be no stores, groceries, or gas available for the whole week.  How well could we do without all of that for one week? 

We began feeling fairly confident, with some minor things we knew we would have to figure out.  I generally do my grocery shopping on Tuesdays and Fridays.  However, Friday had been busy and I had not made it to the store; figuring that we would be fine until Tuesday.  As such we began the week out of eggs and with only a little bit of dish soap left.  We had also planned to take dinner to some friends from church,  a family of 7 who had recently had a baby; we were also scheduled to have dinner for our 3 missionaries serving in Kodiak, all on Monday night.  We decided this was not a problem.  In an emergency we could be called on to help our friends and neighbors and we should be able to do that easily.  Our only hang up was that we had told our friends we would come out and make pizza with them, and we were out of pizza cheese.  We decided that we would figure something out, and only a little while later another friend called to ask if we could use two blocks of cheese.  Her son had just be diagnosed with a dairy allergy, and she was cleaning out her fridge of all dairy products.  To me, this was our first little miracle.  Now, we could continue our simulation without interruption and still provide dinner for our friends.  We had a great time that night with wonderful friends as we made homemade pizza.  We also took out brownies made from scratch, and our powdered eggs worked perfectly. 

And the week continued.  Samantha made bread several timed during the week.  Connor made a large batch of granola for breakfasts, and we continued to make dinners using our stored food. 

Because we store the food we eat and we eat the food that we store, this was not a big challenge for us.  We did watch some of our consumption.  We tried to conserve gasoline where, Chad began walking home from work for lunch every day. and the kids all walked their paper routes.  We did not cut out any of our activities as we would have during a real disaster, but we conserved where we could and the fuel lasted well past the week.   I was a little more careful with the bottle of dish soap, and again another little miracle.  Like the cruz of oil or the loaves and fishes, the bottle of dish soap, while nearly empty, did not run out. 

Each day the kids would ask when the big one was coming?  The big earthquake with tsunami that would knock out the power and that water.  On Friday, at 11:19 am, the call rang throughout the house.  It was an earthquake, get to your safe places.  Most of the kids scrambled to door ways, Connor (8) just rolled on the floor laughing.  I think he had been the most excited for our mock disaster and was glad it was finally here.  I flipped the breakers and the power was off.  Connor crawled under the house and turned off the water and our 24 hour disaster had begun.  I texted Chad to let him know we were all ok, and then put the phone up to be used for emergencies only. 

The first thing we had to do was treat the “injured”.  Samantha suffered a “broken leg” from falling over some debris, and Alyssa had  a deep cut on her hand.  Connor should have been injured, but I don’t think he could have kept up the charade so he and Kaylin scraped by with just bumps and bruises.  Mom was very ill, something that did not need simulated as I was pretty well down with a bad cold.    We pulled out the emergency kits and dug out the first aid kit.  Here was our first lesson, the first aid kit should be on the top of your kit not at the bottom.  We put a splint on Sam’s leg and left her laying on the couch while we bandaged up Alyssa.  We roped off the stairs, as that area of the house was no longer “safe”.  That meant no extra bedding or clothing, what was in our kits was all we had.

 

We have about 20 gallons of water stored under the house, and another 120 in water barrels outside, so we were ok for potable water.  We did not, however, want to use the good water for sanitation.  Alyssa helped me to collect a bucket of water from the small pond behind the house, and we brought that inside to use for sanitation. 

The fire was still going in the wood stove, for now, so the kids made lunch that way.  Connor got his mess kit out and heated up some left over rice from the fridge, and Alyssa put a pan of water on to boil and cook a box of macaroni and cheese.  
Connor had practiced a week earlier cooking an egg on the wood stove.

The kids all settled down to eat and dig through their kits while mom huddled in a blanket, and fell asleep.  We left a couple of windows open to simulation broken windows, and had to let the fire got out because the chimney might have been “damaged”.

The afternoon wore on with the kids finding things to do for entertainment.  They found a deck of cards in one kit, and later Alyssa pulled out a puzzle.  They played while mom “slept” and Sam had to be reminded that she had a broken leg and could not move around as much as she wanted.  Eventually her injury moved to her arm which had to be tied down to her body. 

Dad arrived home five or six hours after the “earthquake”, and every one celebrated that he was ok.  Preparations for made for dinner and we started to light the lanterns as the house slowly grew darker.  Water was siphoned from the barrels outside and the emergency stove was set up to cook dinner, freeze dried soup mix from the 72 hour kits.  Two small pots of soup were cooked and everyone got mess kits out and gathered together to eat.  We then needed more water to clean up the dishes. 

The house was getting cold now, and we were layering on our hoodies and sweat shirts from out kits.  (We did close the windows at this point, no reason to make everyone else sick.)  And everyone began rolling out sleeping bags and getting ready for bed.  We had several lanterns and candles burning, but it was still too dark to do anything, so everyone settled down in one room together.  We discussed what it would be like if we had to evacuate to an emergency shelter.  How much food and water could we take with us, and how could we stay safe? What would we do if this went on for days for weeks?  How long would the food and water last?   Before long conversation began to die down.  It was probably the first time that everyone willingly was in bed and lights out before 9:00.

We pasted the night fairly well, if a bit uncomfortable.  Dad snoring, mom still sick and coughing, and the kids curled up on the floor.  Morning dawned dark and cold, and Dad was the first up, and started a pot of oatmeal and another pot of water for hot chocolate.  Everyone started moving slowly and we ate and cleaned up our last meal for the disaster. 

By 10:00 the power was back on and Alyssa was headed out for a 4-H archery training.  We put away the sleeping bags and assessed what we needed to replace in the emergency kits.  We had gone nearly 24 hours with no power or water, and were non the worse for it.  We learned where our gaps were in our preparations,  We had used about 15 gallons of water, about 10 of that for sanitation. In a real emergency that would be too much water usage.  We have a camp toilet (a bucket with a seat on it) that we would have to use instead.  We packed more ready made food like granola bars and premade tuna fish into our kits for meals that required less water and less clean up. 

All in all we learned from this experience, and we will hopefully be better prepared next time.  Odds are we may not experience a major natural disaster, but we will hopefully be prepared if we do.  We are not done preparing, we will always have to reevaluate and replenish our storage, but we are a little more confident now.  We know what we have, and we know how to use it. 

Family Night

I love the sunny days in Kodiak!  We don’t see the sun often, but when we do it is almost magical.
Tonight after Connor’s soccer game, we hung out at the park for a little while; with the camera.  Here are just a few of the pictures from that night. 





Everyone got in on the fun with the swings.


Afterward, we came home to try out a new treat. 

Chocolate waffles. 
it is really simple, make your favorite cake batter, from a box works great.
Then cook in the waffle iron, as you would a regular waffle.
Top with some homemade ice cream (because that is how we roll)
And Enjoy!

Believe me, we did!

March 20

It has been a few weeks since I tried to sit and gather my thoughts to put them down in writing. Not much has changed in our day to day life. We are still trying to sell the house, although it is not very promising at the moment. Every once in a while we get a call for a walk through and we spend a day or two frantically cleaning everything, just to have them call at the last minute to cancel. I guess I may that sound like it happens frequently, but in reality it has only happened twice. One such occurrence was today, but the positive side is now I have a clean house which we can hopefully enjoy for a couple of days. (Most likely not.)

Tomorrow I start a new job. It is very part time, a couple of days a month. Bishop got a call last week from a third party merchandiser who likes to hire through the church employment office. We don't have an employment specialist here, nor do we have many welfare cases. So when he was thinking of people in the ward for this job he called me. Now tomorrow I start at Safeway, just rotating product. I also get to work with bishop's wife, Shelly. To be honest, it was the idea of working with her that got me to take the job. I love Bishop and Shelly. She is also my secretary in Relief Society. I am kind of excited to spend the day working with her for the next two days, and the money will be nice too.

This week is Alyssa's spring break, which has been really nice. She still has some work to do over the break, but we have been able to get other things done around the house. The kids still have their paper rules to do. I consider paper routes to be P.E. class and budgeting all rolled into one. They learn hard work, often in unfriendly weather, and the value of money. It still spends pretty quick, but they are excited to see how much they have saved. We make them put half of what they make into a saving account, and they can keep the rest after tithing. Connor was very proud of the cash he has in his piggy bank. He wanted to count it the other day, he has over $420. As I was tucking him into bed he asked me to hug my rich boy. The girls have saved up a good amount too. Even Kaylin has started helping Connor in his route, and is earning $10 a month. What a joy it is to see the kids have a desire to work.

That is all for now, another day gone. We will see what new adventure tomorrow brings.

March 3

This year I wanted to take a page out of Amy Quinn's book. Chad's sister has been emailing a weekly letter to keep the family updated on their family happenings. I really enjoy reading her email every week, but it has made me realize how out of touch with everyone I have become. I started this blog a few years ago as a way to share pictures and news with family who are all very (very, very) far away. The last year or two I have got out of the habit.

As I have tried to think of exciting events each week, I have come to the conclusion that our life is fairly routine and boring. However, while it may seem mundane to me, you may still enjoy our small adventures.

One big thing we are working on is selling our house. For the past year we have been looking for a bigger house. Around the first of February I got a call from the father of Sam's friend Morgan. They live right behind us and had mentioned last summer that they would be trying to sell soon. We looked at the house last summer and let them know we wanted it, but didn't hear back. We knew they had another friend also interested, so when we did not hear back we figured it was gone. With this news we have been frantically clearing out and getting the house ready to sell. Part of that has been renting a storage unit to be able to move some things out that we don't really want to get rid of yet. Hopefully this will help with the moving process when it finally happens.

That brings us up to this last week. Chad was up in Anchorage for a couple of days at a work conference, meeting with all the other IT managers from around Alaska for the Alaska Native Cinsorsiom. How is that for a title? I am sure that he had a good time (he did get to eat a Wendy's jr bacon cheese burger after all), and sleeping on uncomfortable hotel beds. He was also able to get to the temple for a couple of nights, for which I am very jealous.

My project was a little bigger than his trip. While he was gone I tore the kitchen apart and began the process of stripping and painting the kitchen cabinets. I had attempted to paint a section of cabinets a couple of months ago, but learned that I had not prepped as well as I thought. I hadn't sanded everything, but scrubbed it good and painted. Now the paint has begun to peal off. So I had the wonderful experience of stripping the paint off and sanding everything down to begin the process again. Ignorantly, I thought I could do this step Wednesday night in a few hours between dropping Chad off at the airport and taking the kids to young women's. by 7:00 it was looking hopeless as we loaded everyone into the car to run through McDonald's for dinner before getting to the church at 7:30. The paint stripper was bismal disappointment. It did work well to reduce the paint to a gummy sticky mess, and there we had to leave it as we ran off for the night. We found later that the paint came off so much better with out the use of painter stripper. One lesson learned this time, and a process I never want to do again.

On day two, we started early trying to sand the gum off the doors. Seven hours, and many sheets of sand paper later, we set up the doors out in the shed and the girls went to work painting. While they were busy outside, I remained busy sanding and stripping paint inside. This process did indeed go much more quickly with out the use of the chemical paint stripper. By that evening we had a first coat of paint on everything, and I had some incredibly sore muscles. I took the kids out for Chinese food (which they actually wanted and ate), and let them rent a couple of movies.

Day three, Chad was due home that night. My hope of having the kitchen put back before Chad came home was vanishing. I knew the doors would not be back up for several days, but I had hoped to reclaim the kitchen table and the floor. At this point the best I could hope for was to have the last coat of paint on the cabinet boxes. The day flew by and before I know it, it was time to run back out to the airport. Thankfully it is only 9 miles away, so I pushed it up to the last minute, and then threw on some clean cloths to go out and meet Chad. The kids had a wonderful dinner of mini corn dogs and taquitos, with soda to wash it all down. (All part of the I am too busy to cook diet plan)

Now we were up to Saturday morning, and another busy day. Somehow last fall we got involved in the 4-H program, and became leaders for the baking/cooking group. This has actually been kind of fun. We are able to meet in the culinary arts room at the high school and we have divided the kids into two groups. Chad has taken the middle school/high school kids, and I have the elementary kids. Our plan for the year has been to teach cooking from scratch to show kids all the possibilities with food. Today it was macaroni and cheese, not a terribly healthy dish, but still from scratch with food that they are familiar with. Last time we did breakfast foods and they all made pancakes from scratch. The older group also did fresh hash browns and eggs. we have had a total of about 13-15 kids, and they have all been great to work with.

4-H was another great lesson, however the pileup in my kitchen hung over me, between the long hours and the crappy food, my body was not as cooperative as I would have liked. Thankfully, somewhere through the afternoon my second wind kicked it and I found the table again. By the end of the day everything was back in it place, and every room of the house had been cleaned and photographed to send of to a potential buyer. I was so ready for the Sabbath and a day of rest, if only it was a day of rest.

It has been a busy month, but the house is starting to get cleaned out, and hopefully that much closer to being sold.

The weekend alarm

It is seven o'clock on a Sunday morning, and the cat just woke me up. He is our weekend alarm. During the week we are up much earlier getting ready for seminary and work, and getting the kids up for school. On weekends though, he is usually up roaming the halls just before seven, calling for someone to get up with him. Summers are even worse, because it gets light so early, that he thinks everyone should be moving with the sun. He is a strange creature, but very patient with the kids. He is a social animal, always needing to be where the action is, but staying apart from it too. He wakes us up in the morning to come and sit in the kitchen while he eats. He DOES NOT like to eat alone. Most days this means I automatically toss him outside. There are time when that is all he needed, for just a couple of minutes. He does not have a little box in the house. We used to, but there have always been little children running around. Once, before a friends visit, we took the littler box outside and never brought it back in. The cat, who has been know by a dozen different name since coming to live with us, almost instantly adapted and has done his business outside ever since. One of the best things about our cat is his ability to adapt.

So now he has eaten, been outside, and is back just sitting on the floor A few feet away. He doesn't often rub up against people, he does keep a little bit of distance, yet he also stays near. Even with tons of kids running around and trying to play with him, he prefers to stay close rather than running off to hide. As much as I sometime complain about him, he is really a pretty good part of the family.

Little love notes

Have you ever had days where all you do is put out fires? No, not real fires, but the little emergencies and problems that you deal with everyday as part of raising kids. That seems to be my day everyday. Someone always needs something, always wants a little bit of time. Most days that is not a problem, but yesterday was one day when it felt like I was needed in too many places as the same time. I was overwhelmed and felt under appreciated.
Last night one of the kids asked Kaylin why she was wearing two shirts. I was only half listening, and therefore the answer didn't make any sense. She said "because mom is allergic to rabbits."

Yes, I am. More than any other animal I have been around. I don't even have to touch them, just being around them is more than enough. My eyes get red and itchy, my chest gets heavy, and it is hard to breath. My kids know that. Connor has to collect from a lady on his paper route that has a bunch of rabbits, and I stay in the car. Just one time I stood at the door with him, not even inside the house. Wen we got in the car my eyes were burning and it hurt to breath. As a kid I spent the night at a friends house who had baby rabbits. We spent a lot of time playing with them, and they were I. The room with us as we slept. In the morning my eyes were swollen shut. That was my first experience with rabbits, and I have learned to stay away.

Now back to Kaylin. Her response only made sense when we saw what was on her bottom shirt. In her innocent little world, her bunny shirt might hurt Mom. She had covered it up to protect me, and once again I am reminded why I do all things I do for them. I love getting love notes from that girl.

Happy Mother’s Day

We woke this morning to find snow once again covering the ground.  I packed the snow gear in the attic just last week, and I am not going to pull it back down.  While we were are church it continued to snow and we accumulated around 4 inches.  You might think this is crazy to have snow on Mother’s Day, and it really is; but this is Alaska. 
If we had to have snow I am glad it was today and not yesterday.  Yesterday I ran the Earth Day Triathlon for the third year in a row, and I was able to run it with my very good friend Ambee Hill.  She and I have trained together for the last three years, and have competed in many races around the island.  Together we have run a half marathon for the last three years, and various other 5 and 10 k races.   She and her family will be transferring with the Coast Guard this summer to California, and leaving me to find someone else to run with.  (Any volunteers?)  So in many ways this was a bitter sweet race for me.  It is the last race that Ambee and I will run together, it was also an accomplishment for the training I have done.  This was my best time yet, coming in at 1:59:28 for 1 k swim, 5 k run, and 20 k bike.
Over the past years I have struggled with some health problems, which of course may have slowed me down but didn’t stop me.  I found out almost two months ago that I have a plethora of food allergies, that have been the culprit to the last several years of health struggles.  So for the last couple of months I have had to completely readjust my diet.  This means that while I still make the wonderful homemade bread for my kids, it is off limits to me.  Other things that are off limits are oats, barley, rye, corn, soy, eggs, sesame, garlic, peas, peanuts, and tree nuts.  I have also found on my own that dairy, rice, potatoes, and most other starches are not very good for me for the time being.  So my diet has consisted of mostly vegetables and fruit (most of which I have been juicing) with occasionally some chicken or fish, and dry beans.  With this kind of diet change I have felt better, had more energy, and been able to train harder.  While it is a very great challenge to face each day with my limited food options, I can say that when I stick with the right foods I do feel better physically, if not always emotionally.  
Now with this race down, I am on to facing bigger and better challenges.  One thing I have noticed when evaluating my life is that I need the challenges to motivate me, to keep me going.  This does not mean that I am eager for those challenges to come along.  There are some I welcome, like training for the next big race; and others come when I least expect them.  What ever they may be, challenges are a part of our lives, and it is best to face them head on.  At least, that is what I keep telling myself. 
Today I officially begin another big challenge, I was called and sustained to be the Relief Society President.    This is one challenge where my first instinct is to hide, somewhere that one can find me.  Being a leader has never been something that I have sought for.  I enjoy being in the back ground, and just taking care of my job on my own.  This new venture is both overwhelming and frightening to me; but I know that my Heavenly Father will be strengthening me all along the way.  Just as I am strengthened physically when I follow the guidelines I have been given, I will be strengthened spiritually by following the promptings of the spirit.  I know that Heavenly Father cares about all his children, and in doing my part to serve his children I am serving him.   One day I may look back at today and feel that my stress was unnecessary, but for now the burden of leadership feels heavy.  I pray that those I serve will be patient with my weaknesses. 
So here is too the future, and what ever challenges may come I hope we all remember to face them head on.  And Happy Mother’s Day to all you wonderful mothers out there that face your own set of challenges each day and make the best of any situation.