A time to prepare

I spent the morning shoveling snow. Last night our landlords came over to tell us there was an 80% chance that we'd be snowed in. Allison's job won't even allow her to miss work when she's throwing up, so we knew the "snowed-in" excuse wouldn't work. So I woke up early to ensure a pathway to our car. I woke to about 10 inches of snow and read the weather report to find that another 8-10 inches will fall today with wind gusts of up to 45 MPH and temperatures in the teens. A pleasant Rexburg day.

Luckily, we left in plenty of time to take the drive slowly because the roads were terrible. On our normally 50 MPH road, cars were traveling 20 MPH. Arriving in Rexburg 20 minutes early, I asked Allison if she would practice driving if I took her to deserted roads. Surprisingly she accepted the challenge. For her first time driving in the snow, she did quite well!

When Allison and I were dating, we shared a very memorable experience on a snowy day like today. Allison's roommate had gone out of town and told us we could use her car while she was gone. Because Allison lived in a house with 16 girls, we figured we would take advantage of the car one night when we wanted to watch a movie. I brought my laptop, a DVD, and a blanket for each of us and we headed out to Beaver Dick Park. When we arrived in the park it was about 9:30, and we couldn't see any other cars. We drove in the park loop seeking out an ideal place to park for our movie. When we got to the end of the loop, I attempted to turn around, but ended up lodging the car right into a snow bank. After trying several maneuvers to dislodge the car without a single budge, I figured we were stuck.

We tried everything we could think of to get ourselves unstuck--digging out the tires, pushing, placing boards under the tires--all without luck. No other cars were in sight, and Rexburg was 15 miles away. So we made ourselves comfortable, watched the movie, and eventually fell asleep. Well, I fell asleep. Allison lay shivering.

Every once in a while I would get up to turn the heater on in the car, give more blanket to Allison, and assure her that we would not freeze to death. She didn't believe me; as far as she was concerned, this was the worst night of her life.

In the morning we were able to flag down a man in a truck who helped us out. We drove back into town and decided to never take the car again.

This experience taught us the importance of having emergency equipment in our car. So after dropping Allison off at work today I drove to the CAL ranch store and bought an avalanche shovel and a first aid kit to put in the trunk of our car. Then I put some heavy blankets back there as well. This is how we are preparing for "the storm."

We have also begun preparing our food storage. Right now we figure we could live about a month on all of the food we've stored, but we have created a separate budget for food storage to allow us to really start storing more food. We are starting small right now by adding several cans to each shopping trip, but we know that each little bit will make an impact.

So, this is how we're preparing, what are you doing to prepare?