What We Do During a Hurricane

I'm sure you've all heard about Hurricane Sandy that just came through early last week.  At first I wasn't that concerned with it because Hurricane Irene came through and that one wasn't that bad.  Yes, we had to sleep downstairs, worry about tornadoes, flickers of power wanting to go out...yeah, so maybe it was bad and scary, but for some reason, this one didn't freak me out too badly.

We made sure we had plenty of supplies, batteries (for Aubrey's swing of course), water, formula, diapers, food, and junk food.  Aiden's school closed for Monday and Tuesday and even Patrick had off of work.  Maybe this was the point that I started to get concerned.  If they were giving them the days off before then storm even got here, this could be bad.

To say that Patrick follows the weather would be an understatement.  The man should be a meteorologist.  I'm lucky because he knows whats going on with the weather so he's able to calm my nerves. I knew that with this storm, we didn't have to be concerned with tornadoes like last time because of where the storm was heading.  Apparently if you are on the side of the storm that we were on, you don't really get them.  Knowing this made Aiden and I feel much better!  We are also very lucky that we aren't by and big bodies of water and aren't in an area that easily floods so we just had a ton of rain and it was extremely windy.  Some of those big gusts of wind made Emma and I nervous!  We also kept power the whole time. I know, we're extremely lucky.

Here's some of what our family did to entertain ourselves and to keep our minds off the hurricane outside.

• Lots and lots of school work and coloring.  I swear this was all his choice! I had gotten a couple workbooks over the summer and he insisted we do pages and pages of them! I guess he was missing school.

•  Play with anything.  Blocks, babies, playing the wii, ds, board games, jail. You name it, I think we played it. (And excuse Em's hair below, but one thing we don't do in hurricanes is hair! :-))

•  Stare out the door to watch the rain and wind.

•  Watch TV. Mostly cartoons, but news in there too so we could keep an eye on where the storm was.

•  Mommy and Daddy stood on the porch for a minute to feel the gusts of wind.  It didn't really work because the winds were coming up behind our house so you couldn't feel it on the front porch.

• Lots of cuddles 

• Sleepovers...well this didn't happen. Aiden was pretty excited about it, but Emma wasn't having it. She wanted to sleep in her own bed.

• Dress up time

• Photo shoots

• Decorating pumpkins.  I knew there must be a reason that we waited so long to do those!

We were very lucky that the storm didn't cause us much damage.  I can't believe the devastation of some areas I've seen. My heart goes out to all those affected. I just can't even imagine.