Fire Drill FHE

A woman spoke in church this Sunday about self-reliance and gave an account of how she and her husband were separated during the Teton Dam Flood in 1976 and how she managed to get her and her 4 little boys, along with a few belongings, out of their home before it was completely destroyed.  She had one hour.  Our next-door neighbor shares a similar story also.  Next-door neighbor.  That hit a little too close to home. It got me thinking.  Family Night!  Perfect idea for a lesson.


Anyway, I decided to have a staged "fire" in our home tonight.  I asked Tom to set up the smoke detector to go off at a certain time, and then we would calmly exit the house.  Well, Tom's plan "A" didn't work.  The candle set up under the smoke alarm wasn't smokey enough.  Then he moved the toaster in the bathroom, burnt some toast, and there we had it--instant fire drill! We told them there was a fire, and we all needed to get out.  Most were convinced it was real, including Maggie who in her moment of terror whimpered, "I don't want to burn!" Poor Maggie.  She was so confused and very scared. I tried to console her, telling her we were pretending.  It didn't work.  Parker and Kaylee caught on, but the boys were confused. We all stood out in the cold, front yard and processed this for a few minutes.  We discussed where we would meet, what we would do if there was a fire and what our priorities were.  I am glad we did this, because they really had no idea what to do.  


We went inside and ate our 72-hour food kit I had made about 10 years ago.  Vienna sausages, granola bars, hot cocoa mix, beef jerky.  Stuff like that.  They were caught up in the novelty of the packets of food, but then we talked about how this food was what we may have to LIVE off of for a long time if something happened to our home.  I do not want to live on Vienna Sausages for a year.  It's like a soggy, salty hot dog--from a can.  Yuck.  Those things are awful.  We ended the night by playing a game.  Each person was blindfolded.  Tom spun them around, took them to a far-away location in the house, and told them to find their way (while crawling) to the front door.  After quite a few head bonks into walls and chairs, they each found their way out of the house, even when obnoxious siblings would put extra obstacles in their way.


This activity really taught me a lesson.  I am SO not prepared!! I have a lot of work to do getting our 72-hr. kits ready.  Grab and go stuff. We also need practical things like a can opener, extra gas for our grill, more water, etc. I've got a pretty good start to a year's supply of food in our basement. That is, if we can get to it down stairs, or it is not all floating away. 


Let's hope we don't all have nightmares tonight from our traumatic experience. 

R.I.P. Mr. Rooster

Today we had chicken tacos for dinner.  I opened the freezer, found a whole chicken. I thawed it out, plopped it into the crockpot with lots of yummy spices, and cooked it during church, eagerly anticipating coming home from church to have shredded mexican chicken for tacos, salad, or whatever we wanted.  I didn't think too much about the source of the chicken until we sat down to dinner and Tom announced that we were eating THE rooster from the summer.  Each of the kids continued to tell story after story of their good memories with the rooster.  He was overly chubby, loved to be chased around the yard, and had a favorite corner of the coop.  After each story, my dinner just got less and less desirable.  I was done about half-way through my chicken taco salad.  

A Reason For the Crazy

I am now an official blogger!  I wanted to pick a blog name that was fitting for our family.  All I could think was "crazy" and that one was taken. So, I added "mountain" and that was it! Come to think about it, we are a crazy mountain family.  Sometimes we are below the mountain looking up at a challenging time ahead.  Other times we are on top of a "mountain" looking back at our good times.  To me, that is a Sunday afternoon after a long week, or coming home to a crockpot of soup following a great powder day of skiing together as a family. We don't always look like an LL Bean catalog family, but we sure do have fun.  I am looking forward to journaling the here and now, and also to capturing the memories that we have made as our family lived in the mountains at Badger Creek.  What an amazing experience that I don't want to forget.              It's going to be a great view!!!