Hurricane Season

We just received our first Hurricane Evacuation Guide. Complete with a list of essential items for a family survival kit, including: a whistle to signal for help, plastic sheeting and duct tape, a wrench or pliers, and a fire extinguisher.

Now I'm beginning to wonder, why didn't we get one of these booklets last year? We moved here just a few weeks less than a year ago, just in time for hurricane season.

I would not have ever thought to add even one of those items I just mentioned to a "survival kit". My survival kit would have included: matches, candles, some water, oreos, dried blueberries, peanut butter, and maybe some toilet paper. Be honest, would you have considered adding a whistle to an emergency kit? Really, a whistle?

To say the least, I would have been terribly unprepared in the event of a disaster. To add to that, I probably would have gotten lost trying to evacuate the city. The only thing I could have done was click my heels together and dream of a place without natural disasters (namely, Oregon).

However, this year, I'm prepared. I have an evacuation guide. I can follow the red lines on the full-page map to get out of town. I now know the difference between category 1 and category 5. And most importantly, I have an emergency supply kit list. Now I just have to figure out exactly what is a written family emergency plan and how to write one. And maybe I'll add a rope ladder to my list. That's got to be just as useful as a whistle, and I've always wanted to climb out of my window with one of those.

But I'll still be dreaming of Oregon.

Speaking of recovery...

Ryan and I have both recently found the place we will be residing for the next 6 hours, at least. That would be our couch, with our feet up.

This is because we can't move our legs, well more so, we can't move our legs without feeling shooting pains in our feet and calves.

It is the sufferings of the vacationers.

What kind of vacation led us to this miserable state of health? Well, only that of trekking around the city of national monuments in 110 degree weather.

**I'm sorry but there will be no pictures at this time due to the state of my general appearance after walking 4 miles in such high humidity and heat. It was not glamorous.**

However, we did have a fabulous time. We woke up early and took a siesta in the middle of the day and for the most part planned our hours according to the weather. And according to the boy scouts.

Oh, you didn't know that tens of thousands of boy scouts were invading the capitol this weekend? Neither did we. They were celebrating 100 years of, well, scouting and khaki shorts with green socks. The sheer number of adolescents was a little overwhelming. Fortunately for us, their parade was planned perfectly with our 1:00 nap.

Ryan's favorite was visiting Lincoln in his chair and arriving perfectly on time to witness the changing of the guard at the cemetery. Mine was air conditioned museums with practically every animal life size, as well as a display of each of their bones. Did you know that snakes have like a billion rib cages? I just thought they had a spinal cord thingy. And that a giant tortoise's little skeleton is so much like other animals even though they're all hidden inside the huge shell?

Unfortunately, the polish dogs that I was looking forward to buying off the street did not look nearly as appetizing as they had in my head on the air conditioned car ride up there. Something about the heat index, I think. But plain ice water was a good substitute.

This weekend was definitely the perfect way to spend our first anniversary. It's a great start to lots of future family vacations. Like this weekend, we know that everything during a vacation doesn't go perfectly (adventures, my mom calls those) but overall, we enjoyed our chance to get away and spend extra time together.

I'll be honest. I'm still recovering from the whirlwind of activity with my in-laws this last week. But its a good kind of recovery, like the kind of recovery you have after a fun day jumping around in the waves at the beach.

Actually it was probably a combination of recovering both from having 7 people in my apartment and getting crushed by waves at the beach every day for a week.

But for the record, we had a fantastic week. We swam and swam and swam in the ocean. We (well mostly Ryan's nephew) built and destroyed numerous sandcastles. We saw a pod of dolphins. We ate a lot of sand, but managed to avoid any serious sunburns.

We hung out with some early American colonists. I tried to give Ryan brain surgery, patriot soldier style (picture a rusty metal device with a sharp row of teeth: he wouldn't let me go through with it, even though I explained that this procedure had a higher survival rate on the battlefield than amputations)

And most of all ate lots of good food. And drank lots of pop, like good midwesterners. (pop pop pop: do you hear me all y'all out here east of the mississippi? it's called pop. so leave me alone.)

So you can probably imagine why we all needed a little rest after this week. I'm taking mine in the form of a 2 hour nap each day for a week. Which I'm going to do...now.

Birthday Post:

My birthday was lovely, of course. Thank you for asking.

breakfast in bed

shiny new rollerblades

a trip down the boardwalk to test them out

a dip in the ocean

saltwater up my nose and sand in my hair

a nap on the beach

add on dinner and a movie and it was a perfect birthday.

Thanks, dear. And thank you all for thinking of me.