Preparedness Challenge-Day 3 and 4.....uh, and 5....

I should have thought ahead and prepped the posts for the rest of these day.
You know, be prepared.

This week has been crazy!  Seriously.  Capital C crazy.

But dang it, we were in this thing to compete so we hung on and finished the challenges.

Day 3-Evacuation.  Big fire started in the fields near our home (darn kids and their fireworks) and we need to evacuate.   10 minutes to grab everything you need and get out.  Oh, and cell phone lines are jammed because everyone is freaking out.
I was home with the three youngest when I read this, and we played it as real.  I was SO pleased with how quick and helpful Charli and Lincoln were!  Charli even made sure to get the dogs leashes on them and have them ready to go.  Lincoln helped me get supplies out and helped with Sam while I rounded up things.  I didn't actually take everything to the car that I would have taken, but went to each item, and made separate trips to the car as though I were doing so.  And as discussed many times in our house, after kids I went for the external hard drives.
There was a list to go over for suggested supplies and points were accumulated based on what you remembered to get, getting out in 10min, and few other things.  You can read over the list HERE if you'd like to see it.
My fail here?  We do not have 72hr kits for everyone.  We do have go-to things and I successfully got each of them, but no official kits for each person.
Also, I blew off the 5pts for playing the cell phone lines jammed (for 3hrs) part of it because Wednesday was the beginning of the crazy and an out of town friend was helping me through it all.  Totally worth forfeiting those 5 points!

Day 4-Your 2yr old wanders off (entirely too possible.  except she's 3 now.), and when you do locate her she has fallen and has a large gaping wound in her leg.  As a bonus, your 1yr old is choking on a grape and has turned purple.
Challenge 1-what do you do to locate your child?  Do your kids know what to do if lost?  We have actually seen this in play in this neighborhood more than once with a child wandering off or not coming home after school.  There are a billion children in our neighborhood so it happens.  The amazing networking here has kicked in immediately every time.  Between facebook, texting, emails, calling trees, and numerous neighbors jumping in and going door to door to help find children, our little corner of the world sure kicks into high gear quickly!  It truly is amazing!
Challenge 2- Can you treat your child with your first aid kit?  Do you have the necessary supplies and know what to do?  We've had entirely too much first aid practice in our family.  It is something Aaron emphasizes when the boys are doing scouting things and he always pulls the girls in on it too.  I am so impressed with all he has taught our kids!  And we have an EMT bag that is fully stocked, huge relief with our kids.
Challenge 3-Heimlich for babies. I have always been taught the method of laying baby face down and hitting (for lack of a better term coming to mind right now) baby on the back.  Aaron enlightened me on the next step if that doesn't work, which is basically Heimlich on the front-still laying downward, head below feet-and essentially mini-heimlich-ing baby with two fingers.  Good to know!
Bonus points for first aid kit items (another list on the website) and knowing Heimlich for adults.

Day 5-Show me the money!  Hungry relatives-also with the illness-got kicked out of their neighborhood, came to stay with you and ate all your fresh food.  Darn family.  And we're still quarantined!
Also youngest child needs tonsils out, someone else has been hospitalized with the illness and there is car trouble.  Hundreds and hundreds of dollars in bills due asap!
Challenge 1-Make dinner using only food storage, no "fresh" ingredients.  We are great here!  We had a number of things to choose from, but Taylor is in charge of helping with dinner on Friday so he picked waffles.  And then he made everything all on his own.  I love my kids!  We did also have our veggies from the garden and everything in the deep freeze, but the boy wanted to keep things simple.  I'm good with that!
Challenge 2-Review finances.  How would you cover these expenses if they hit you right now?
We are way too acquainted with our finances.  Ugh.  We use our tax return each year to fuel unexpected expenses and do the best we can.  Sometimes the credit cards come into play because life keeps us stretched pretty thin, but we do the best we can.
10 points for food storage dinner, minus one point for each non-storage item used.
10points for discussing finances and discovering how to handle the above scenario.
and the 25 points for staying quarantined all week.

Oh-we also did our second fire drill this evening, the kids were awesome, and the dogs were taken out this time too.  Phew!

This was a fabulous learning experience for us!  It was really very reassuring for the most part!  It was nice to know that we are prepared enough to handle many things that could come our way!  We definitely found areas we could improve on as well, so we have ideas in mind of how to work on those things.
The competition in our neighborhood is fierce, it is impressive how on top of things people are here!  It will be interesting to see who takes the crown in this challenge.  I have a feeling there are people who will have gotten every possible point, and that the winners will be separated only by a few points.  What a great challenge this was!