Yesterday was an absolutely gorgeous day!  Blue skies, gentle breezes…I got sunburned, but it wasn't the fault of the lovely weather we were having, just me forgetting to use sunscreen.  The day really was beautiful.  A great day for a garage sale.  But it wasn't like that all week long – it rained earlier this week.

We don't get a lot of rain in San Diego.  The climate is great here and we begin to take for granted the mild climate until a rain storm reminds us that some things need to be sheltered from the elements, like the mountain of stuff in my backyard.  If they aren't covered, chances are that water will cause rust or mold or some other terminal condition for items intended for use inside.  Megan called me from work that morning, the morning it rained.  She said that there was a good chance that it would rain.  Sure enough, before I could really start to cover things, it was coming down.  I did what I could, but I ran out of tarps.  I was kicking myself that I hadn't done it earlier, taken preventative steps before I had to hurry and worry about it.  The cleaning up and throwing away because I wasn't prepared took way longer than if I realized it would.  If only, if only…

There has been a push from our local church leaders for us to get our 72-hour kits in order…or get them at all.  It seems to be one of those "I'll get around to it soon" projects that a lot of people never actually get around to…me included.  I opined about the blackout and not having everything in one place, ready to go if we ever found ourselves with the power off again or needing to evacuate.  That was weeks ago.  How quickly we forget.  I am fond of cutting myself some slack – I am very busy right now in my life, with lots of hurdles that I am already jumping over, trying to catch up.  But if this process is important enough that there is such an intensified push for us to get our 72-hour kits together, then I need to do as much as I can to get going.  So I gathered and put these items into an old rolling scrapbook tote:

12 bottles of water, eight cans of chili and soup (pop-top cans), 18 granola bars, trail mix, bag of jerky, first-aid kit (bandages, band-aids, antibiotic ointment, alcohol wipes, ibuprofen, aspirin), hand sanitizer, toilet paper, garbage bags (heavy duty large and smaller ones), matches, small camping teapot (for boiling water), wash cloths (I want to be able to wash my face:) and 3 rain ponchos (I need one more).  I also have several freeze-dried meals for two, but I may want to rethink those because water may be more precious than food in event of a catastrophic disaster.

I still have some very important things to add to our very basic kit, which I plan to gather tomorrow and Tuesday, including sets of important documents for all the kids and to solidify our family plan.  We have a couple of water filtration bottles that the boys have taken camping, but I think we should have a couple more so that everyone can have one in their own backpacks.  Next, I will start looking for the things that would make an emergency easier to handle. 

Today was beautiful as well, not a cloud in the sky.  Seems like it was that way back at the time of Noah and there were a heck of a lot of people that missed that boat.