Emergency Preparedness FHE

Tonight for FHE I decided to do a 'Pretend Earthquake' drill.  I had the alarm on my phone go off just after we started FHE. I told Josh it was for him.  When he found it, there was a note attached to it saying "It's an Earthquake! Find cover for 1 minute."  I told Josh to pretend that it was really happening and that he needed to act quickly.  We were in the living room and so he looks around and then dives under the piano.  "Umm, that's probably not very sturdy" I told him "is there somewhere else you could get to super fast that would be safer?"  He ran into the kitchen and slid under the table.  "Great job!" I told him.  The next note said "The front door and the garage door are both blocked.  You have 2 minutes to grab anything you need and then meet outside."  He is full of smiles as he runs to his room.  Mike and I leave out the front door and Josh tries to follow.  "No" I tell him "remember the doors are blocked, you have to find another way out of the house."  He looks kind of shocked for a second and then shouts "The back door!"  He get's out, scales the small fence, and runs to meet me over at our designated safe house (Bode's).  It took him 2 min 25sec.  I look at what he's carrying in his hands.  It's a pair of socks.  Dirty socks.  Hmmm.  The next clue says that Bode's house is on fire, where do you go?  "The mailbox!" he yells and starts taking off down the street.  He is having so much fun.  We make it to the mailbox and it says that a gas pipe broke and they're evacuating the neighborhood, where does he go now?  He didn't know this one and neither did Mike so I just told them that we're suppose to meet at the park by the tracks.  We walk down there and Josh see's the last note stuck to our truck window.  It says that the community is all shaken up and there are no open stores, electricity or drive-able roads and that he has to rely on his 72hr kit for dinner. I had put our 72 hr kits in the truck before hand and had left it by the park because I knew Josh would never think to grab it before leaving the house.  Although, I don't think he really understood what it was for so it's okay.  I let Josh go through his bag and see what's in there.  He's thrilled with the 'treasures' he finds.  I tell him that he has to pick an mre to eat for dinner.  Mike says it won't work without water, but I got the kind that doesn't need water.  Score one for me.  There was a little 'stove' in my bag and we heated up the meal in a large mug.  It was Ravioli with Beef Sauce or something like that.  Josh loved it.  Mike was trying to humor me but wasn't all that excited to eat that for his dinner.  We had an mre shortbread cookie for dessert, which Mike said tasted like cardboard, and then Josh said he was thirsty.  I let him open up one of his pouches of water and he drank it happily.  He said that he was starting to get cold and then wanted to know if he could open up his emergency blanket but that was where I drew the line.   Josh had so much fun that he asked if we could do it again for FHE next week.  Probably not, but maybe after I add a few things to our 72 hr kits, we'll have to have a practice drill again.  Hopefully Josh will remember to grab his kit....instead of dirty socks.

Halloween

Last year for Halloween Josh wanted to be Dan, the main character from the kid show Bakugan.  NOBODY knew who that was and we tried to convince him to be something else but he had his mind set.  So he was Dan.  This is what his costume looked like.

This is the only picture I got of him at his school parade because there were so many parents there.

Anyway, this year he decided that he wanted to be Gingka, the main character from the BeyBlade cartoon.

If you don't recognize him, don't worry, most people don't.  I had no idea who he was until Josh started asking to be him.  On Saturday I finally decided that he wasn't going to change his mind and so tried to go online to buy it.  Everywhere cheap was sold out.  SOLD OUT.  Really? I thought Josh was the only kid alive who knew about this guy.  I finally found one but it was $35 plus $9 for shipping.  There was NO way I was going to spend that much on it.  Josh wandered in at this point and I showed him how they all said sold out.  I told him that he was going to have to come up with a different idea for a costume.  Nervous, we again started searching websites for the 'perfect' costume.  After an hour, he declare that he was going to be Anakin Skywalker.

Really?  That's great!!!  I couldn't believe that he had picked a normal looking costume that many people could easily identify.  It didn't look too complicated so I decided that I would make it.  The only condition Josh had was that he needed a 'glowing' light saber.  Fine, I could handle that.  That night Josh, Mike and I all went to Walmart looking for a light saber.  We found some in the toy section but they didn't glow.  We started searching the Halloween section and were rewarded by finding one that glowed.  The only problem was that it was red.  RED!  He really wanted it but it just wasn't going to work with an Anakin costume.  He decided, with a little help from Mike, that he was going to be Darth Vadar instead.

I couldn't believe my luck.  This was a costume that EVERYONE would recognize.  Yes!! They even had a costume there his size so we just went ahead and bought it.  He is now all set.  Costume? Check.  Light saber? Check.  Realistic Darth Vader breathing sound machine?  Check.