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Home from work then off for the 2mi bike ride. I told DH that if they want me to ride w/them, I just can't go the 4mi they were going on. Not enough time to get the house in order and cook dinner and get everyone ready for tomorrow. It's hard. I hate the heat, but hopefully it'll get easier.
Anyways, for my Day 2 of Preparedness I chose to restock my vehicle EDC (every day carry) bag. It is a different bag from my vehicle tool bag. Has things like duct tape, snacks, small cook stove, fire starters, 1st aid kit, plastic ware, and a few bottles of water. A knife or two, small fishing kit, backpacking fishing pole, hammock, rope, can opener, etc. it's basically a small bug out bag. Comes in so handy all the time. Halloween is coming up, so inexpensive packs of Glosticks will be on the agenda for tomorrow.
All restocked. This is a roundabout view of the fillings. I keep everything in a duffel bag that I got from Backwoods as a birthday gift.
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Day 3 of Preparedness Month: Well since I've got all my restocking stuff out from last night, I might as well finish it off. So today I will be restocking our Individual Bug Out Bags. These are basically 72hr bags w a little extra. I think our youngest DD (4yro) is big enough that she can carry her own crayons and toilet paper. Swapping them over for cooler months is a big deal too. So make sure that you adjust yours as well. At this time our BOBs are more designed as INCH (im not coming home) bags, rather than get to a certain point. Their heavy. They need to be lighter w/more multi-use items. It's a long run to the cellar. We've also had a shortage on flashlights, and if you went to my Weather Ready class, you know we've got a lot of flashlights just around the house. I'm prob gonna need more batteries today.
All ready to go. I wasn't able to get oldest DD's bag done, as it's apparently in the cellar from the last time we went down there. I haven't bug bombed it since springtime. So her bag will have to wait for extra time.
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Day 4 for Preparedness: Part of doing the Preparedness I wanted to do all those little things that make life a bit better around our unfinished home. So today I finally put up the hooks for my cast iron pans. It's not a permanent home for them, but with hardly anyplace to store without the pantry finished, I thought this would be awesome.
Day 5 of Preparedness: I finally got a new vacuum! I went for cheap, easy to store, and easy to use. For years we've used the Rainbow vacuum cleaner. It works nice but bulky and uses water. One of the reasons it's hard to maintain is because of the water, and it tends to sit a couple days before we remember to dump it out. Then it has to be rinsed out. Really a big hassle for small jobs. So I found the Eureka AirSpeed Turbo. I think it was about $60 at Walmart. I love it! In fact, it works so great that I have to turn it on the mid floor setting to keep from sticking to the hardwood floors. It actually sucks the dirt from outside of the sides! So when I got home, I put it through a small stress test. :p The only issue that I even came across was the attachment hose has so much bounce (which will eventually loosen up), that I had to have our youngest DD hold the body from falling over while I did the couches. Here's a picture of the vacuum, the picture is not mine, but that's what it looks like.
As I mentioned earlier, something else that we've started doing this month is bike riding, accommodating weight loss. My DH decided to step on the scale last month and is determined to lose 30lbs by the end of the month. He has been cycling since the end of last month (about 4 days ahead of my start), I got a bike a few days ago was able to join in. A very expensive start up, but I haven't been on a bike since I was a teen, and even then not much when you live in the country. Mom and Dad never let us ride on the road. Riding in sand around the farm was a disappointment. With our Outdoor Adventurers group we haven't had many backpacking or hiking trips in a while. I thought that this would help strengthen my legs and ankles. As we don't have any other health issues, other than being a little overweight, we thought this could turn out to be very beneficial. It's hard! Kudos to anyone that rides a bike. As I mentioned we do live in the country, and a country block is much harder than a city block. We're determined, and that's what counts. Exercise is very important to being prepared also.
Day 6 of Preparedness: Didn't have much time to plan anything. We rode our bikes up to the corner, then backtracked back and to the next corner. It was 2 miles. I'll tell you now, I ain't ashamed of walking. As long as I'm still out there, it's good. My DH and DD's make sure to encourage me when I'm pumping up those last few feet to the top of the hills too. It also didn't take us as long as we thought either. I'm exhausted, not really in pain, but exhausted.
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Day 7 of Preparedness: I put away trying to do anything for preparing on Sundays. Sunday is Church for us, cleaning the house day, and get ready for school and work time. It already gets pretty crazy. However, we decided to bike around Purcell Lake today after church. Also inviting several people to tag along with us. It was very fun. It's 3 miles easy ride around the Lake. We think that we may make an activity of it after church every Sunday. I should add that myself, our oldest DD, and DH are on bikes. Our youngest DD is too little to ride so far yet, and she is pulled in cart by DH. He really liked riding the lake. Also, we changed 3 tires on friends' bikes that rode with us. We will now remember that a flat tire might not be a bad tire. :)
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Day 8 of Preparedness: Well after our experience of changing tires in the parking lot at the Lake yesterday, I couldn't help but notice that my vehicle tool bag is missing a few key components. This evening I dumped it out and went through it. Added many things, and tracked down several items that ended up in DH truck. I'm not currently thinking about winter, but I don't want to be short tooled. It took me about 45 minutes to do this task.
My list of contents for vehicle tool bag: pliers (regular and needle), screwdrivers phillips and flat, crescent wrench, zip ties, Slime tire patch and plug kit, small hammer, 4 diff sized hose clamps, serpentine belt, steel wool, small can WD-40, electrical tape, 2 ft of 6 line electrical wire, then some other small ends and bits.
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Day 9 of Preparedness: Well since I had the tools out and about yesterday evening, it made it really easy to organize the home toolbox back out. Organization is really key in any emergency. Even with my organization skills, I counted count the times that I've just went in and had to start throwing things out of the way, then turned around and stuffed them back in horribly fitting. lol! Since our toolbox is in the living room at the moment, it has been on my To Do list for a while. This evening I spent an hour taking everything out and carefully fitting it back in. I found several things that I'd been looking for also. Win win! :)
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Day 10 of Preparedness: DD had a Cross Country meet today. We all went and cheered her on. When we finally got home, it was just light enough to ride. After that I was too beat to get anything done. Maybe I can double up on a day. :p
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Day 11 of Preparedness: The day that started it all. Did you know that it only took 19 people (terrorists) to do something that will mark our history books forever. 19 people that killed almost 3000 others, injuring hundreds. The day that you could say, Woke us up. I've got some information to gather today for Preparedness projects, that's the only thing that I'll be doing today. Never forget, Always Remember. Preparing to Prepare.
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Day 12 of Preparedness: The refrigerator! Ours is not at it's finest right now. That is something that is often overlooked. Koolaid, tea, something that used to be food, stuck and dripped down the sides and front catch. If your power goes out for a while, and food seeps all over, it's nice to only clean up the current mess rather than a caked on mess. Organizing and cleanliness play a big role in prepping, even if it's something small. Even got the vacuum and got the dust walls over the vents. Maintenance on large appliances helps in the long run...unless you have money on hand to make large purchases at random times.
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Day 13 of Preparedness: We were out running around town and decided to go ride at the lake just us. We did 8.5miles! That's the longest I've done since riding. My shins hurt...but in a good way? lol! Since we were out and about most of today, I didn't get anything planned for prepping. So project for today was Exercise.
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Day 14 of Preparedness: Church, then the lake for another easy ride and off to get some stuff done. More de-cluttering my collection habits. I've been putting off making a silverware holder that I found on Pinterest. It requires veggi cans, and I am tired of moving them around. So I got that started. Their painted and ready to be put together. Now just to get DH to cut the wood for them, and all done.
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Day 15 of Preparedness: I really like Monday evenings. I can get quite a bit of things done. We don't watch many television shows, but when Under The Dome came back on, we do tend to gather in front of the telly. The best part is that it's on late. So we can get lots of things done and have a reason to settle down. Anyways, since the refrigerator was clean now, it looked so empty. Everyone loves the Ready To Eat Meals in a Jar that I conjure up occasionally. My project this evening was fill the fridge back up. I made spaghetti, salads, and fruit jars. These are great for the girls after school, mostly because it keeps them from making a huge mess in the kitchen. The bonus is that they stay fresh for weeks!
Day 16 of Preparedness: For today I didn't really have anything planned, but I was thinking of my Inlaws today. They have many animals, many different kinds also. It was a pretty nice day to be outside today too. We don't have any animals at our house, inside or out. Since having our first DD, I tend to be on the itchy side when I come in contact with them. Living on a family farm, we're the only ones without pets. That won't keep me from prepping for them anyways. I picked up a large bag of dogfood, catfood, and birdseed today. Gonna fill up some 5gal buckets. This could come in handy in bad weather storms when no one can get out that didn't prepare. Something else, if you have animals, take pictures of them if you will miss them.
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Day 17 of Preparedness: Well I knew this day would come shortly. Every other Wednesday we have an Outdoor Adventurer meeting. I miss a day of bike riding, and maybe without a project to do. This meeting was good for Prep though. We have an upcoming backpacking trip where we will be carrying our own selection of food, and several new hikers will be joining us. It will be a short overnight trek to see who can handle it. Sometimes even the weight of a pack is too much for the kids. I guess I should mention that Outdoor Adventurers is our own spinoff from Boy Scouts of America. We wanted to do more Life Skill building, things that give them knowledge in preparedness and survival. It is also still a Church group. We live in a very small and poor community, finding kids to take part and attend are very few to rare. When signed with the BSA, you have to have a certain amount of boys to be in. Also, the girls have to be in a different branch of Scouting (Heritage Girls). We also didn't have enough to qualify for this either. So we made our own group that all can join and learn new things. We actually have more freedom to do more things that relate to life skills too. For our meeting this evening we went over different kinds of multi-use equipment, and lightweight easy to cook foods.
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Day 18 of Preparedness: Not much I did this evening, but I do need to get my Dehydrated Dinner meals back up to stock. I made a list of things to get from the store. Some I vacuum seal, and some I put in mason jars. It's basically a homemade hamburger helper. Just add water and meat. Here's an old picture that I took of some I did a few years ago.
Day 19 of Preparedness: All this bike riding requires tools for emergency maintenance on the road. We've slowly acquired most of the important tools that we need on the road, and at home. However, it's just kind of a jumble that we toss in DD's bike cart. I've went through everything twice and have picked out the must haves to add to the vehicle tool bag. Now to get in the attic and find an appropriate bag to store them in.
Also, I've been really trying to get into Geocaching. I've signed up for it and we've found a couple before, but I'd like to go more, and more often. Kinda gearing up on coordinates for traveling to the Wichitas in a few days. I also told DH that if he wanted to do a long bike ride, I would go if we could Geocache on the way. We will see how this pans out. :)
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Day 20 of Preparedness: This weekend is our annual tribal dance. I am Native American, Ft. Sill Apache Indian. I love my heritage, and also try to involve myself whenever possible. Living 2 hours away from our grounds, plays a big part in it. I am a member on our Election Committee board. We are a very small Tribe, but have come very far in the past 100 years. Anyways, our oldest DD had a Cross Country meet this morning. She didn't get back in time for us to make it to the dance, so I got mostly cleaning done today. We got the front porch all cleaned off from the summer build up, and ready for sittin and relaxin this Fall. Plus, I've got some Pinterest projects that I'd like to finally put together for the front.
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Day 21 of Preparedness: Church, then ride at the lake. It's turning into quite a turnout on our Sunday rides. We've invited all people that we know, just to get outside. People do so much moaning and groaning when exercise is mentioned nowadays, that we forget how easy it is. The best part is that we head over to Subway afterwards for a healthy meal to tie it off. The Subway is in Walmart, it's a plus for anyone that needs a few things before heading out of town. Anyways, after we ate lunch, we browsed through the camping section. It actually hadn't dawned on me that camping was going out of season, until I seen that Coleman Camping Fuel (white fuel) was less than $10 a can. This brought up that I still haven't reached my goal of having an emergency supply of fuel. I've got 2 Coleman stoves, 2 lanterns, and 2 heaters that all use this. Always having an extra source is on my mind. I hate having to be limited on just burning firewood for all needs. So I talked DH into picking up 4 gallons. :)
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I forgot to mention that our television has been broke for nearly a week. The light went out in it. While we wait for the replacement, our bikes have taken up residency in the livingroom. lol! I hope it comes in soon, my butt can't take the bike AND barstool in the kitchen (we have a 12" telly in there. :p I should mention before you see the pic, that even though we are frugal, we do love our expense. We have very little debt. Yes our livingroom television is an 82". That's the benefits of being prepared.
Day 22 of Preparedness: Water rotation! Didn't have much time this evening, but I really wanted to get something done. The shower needed cleaning, and I figured that since my clothes were already wet, why not splash around a bit. So outside with all the water. I always could use the water in the yard or in the garden. Def don't want to waste water here in Oklahoma. You never know when you'll get it again. :p We keep just over 60 gallons of water stored in the house at all times. I rinsed them all out with a bit of bleach, and refilled them with cold water. I also taste the water that comes out of them just to make sure that they were stored well.Got everything all done and some dinner cooked up, all in time for the final season episode of Under The Dome. :)
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Day 23 of Preparedness: BATTERIES TOO?! Been so caught up with what's going on in the world, plus cycling, I didn't realize we were on our last bit of batteries. I had to get into the Faraday Box for a refill on the game controllers. Hey, just because I'm a prepper doesn't mean I don't know how to play video games (actually I'm addicted to Minecraft). Anyways...I usually buy the cheapo Harbor Freight batteries for our regular use, and then store the good brands in the Faraday Box. Our luck hasn't been good on the cheap ones, especially with both of the Nintendo Wiis working in both bedrooms. So we dumped a chunk of cash on good batteries. I keep 2 dozen of almost each battery in the Faraday Box, then I also have a battery rack that tests and holds almost a dozen of each too. The Faraday Box does not get opened unless absolutely necessary (calming 2 fighting girls down with video games is necessary). Plus, the battery rack doesn't hold that many, so I keep the extras in a drawer. $80 on batteries. :/ I needed to do this anyways and while I was replacing cheap batteries, I went ahead and changed all the flashlight batteries too.
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Day 24 of Preparedness: Didn't prep anything. Got to get ready for an all day trip with my FIL tomorrow. Came home, rode 2.5 miles on bike. Then went outside to fire some shots off at our range. Since we live on a farm, and the canyon runs right beside the house, we cleared straight through it. I love it. I don't shoot as much anymore since all I see are little dollar signs flying out of the guns. lol! Here's an old video of right after I got it up and running. It was really windy, and I apologize as it was like my 5th video made. :p ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Day 25 of Preparedness: Today I went with my FIL and other Assistant Leader (Joe) to the Wichita Mountains to scout out some info on where we will be backpacking come December. We hiked part of the trail to get a feel for it, and whether all the Outdoor Adventurers could do it. This was a very beautiful day for cruising around. I'm actually very familiar with this area, as my Grandmother used to bring us up there all the time for picnics and playing. I was impressed to get some nifty monument coins at the gift shop. These will make great Geocache Swag for this weekend. While driving through the refuge we also came as close to one of the buffalo as I have ever been before. He just moseyed on across the road. I was able to convince my FIL to stop at 3 cache locations. I found 2 of the 3. It was fun.
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Day 26 of Preparedness: Did some organizing on our Faraday Box. It's really kind of turned into a junk box over the past few months. Things that we would bug out with, but not items that need protected from solar flares or EMPS. I also had a couple of things to add to it anyways. Got to get some rest for tomorrow. Oh, we finally got the part in for the television and they installed it very quickly! YAY!
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Day 27 of Preparedness: Exercise. Just get it out of the way now. The day we've been anxious for. We will embark on a 20 mile country road trip...on bicycles. We will stop at 3 Geocaches and my Aunts house along the way. If we have enough time, we will stop at 5 geocaches. Me and the girls had to wait for DH to get home, so I did get a couple of things done this morning.
We made it! We had a small detour while looking for geocaches. 20 miles on country roads. Had to do the last 2 miles in the dark. Luckily we've got lights on the bikes. It was HARD. Never be ashamed of walking your bike up the hill...well that's what they tell me. Even our youngest DD is tired from the trip, and all she did was ride! Our bikes are in a pile in the front yard. It's barely 8pm...time for bed.
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Day 28 of Preparedness: SUNDAY! Church then the Lake. Our riding group was very small today. It seems to be getting smaller by the week. I can't believe how hard it is to get people to ride, that want to! I'm disappointed that so many people want to get in better shape, but don't want to do the effort for it. Several also think that riding a bike is seriously hard, but it's not...unless you ride with us on weekdays down country roads. :p We got home and I went ahead sliced and dehydrated some onions. It was hard on the noses, but at least I got it done. 5 trays worth of onions will turn into about 1/2 of a gallon dehydrated.The fans are going strong and the windows are all open.
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Day 29 of Preparedness: Today was just blah. I didn't feel like doing anything, anywhere. Just gonna cook supper and watch some television. :)
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Day 30 of Preparedness: Well it's the last day and I've gotten a lot of things accomplished that I wanted to do. I've still got several unfinished things around the house that needs done, but the weather just hasn't cooperated much this month. October is soon to bring much cooler weather. Being able to open all the windows while cooking or cleaning, sure makes it a lot easier to sit in the kitchen using the canner for a couple of hours. Over the course of the month I did many other things. Things that I don't really classify as Preparedness tasks, mostly because we do them all year long. This month was more focused on the To Do list. I made some coffee soap for my Aunt, and another 5 gal batch of liquid laundry soap, sorted and stored my canning jars, labeled the ceiling joists in the attic to say what is stored in the totes under them then cleaned the attic. Our Church also had a Garage Sale to help raise money for the kids for Falls Creek next year. I've had that pile of stuff in the corner for months now, and was very happy to finally see it go. Refilled several buckets of food (sugar, macaroni noodles, flour) and then my quart jars of spices were a bit low. These are things that we do throughout the year. Making prepping a part of your everyday life is very key. It's not just a once a year, or once a month thing. You got to do it all the time. We actually don't consider ourselves as Preppers anymore, rather we go more for Modern Homesteaders. :p----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well I hope that you enjoyed my Preparedness tasks. I hope that you stopped and spent some time today getting prepared too. Learn it. Live it. Love it.
