Preparing for the worst

Our second natural disaster in one week! Ahh! Speaking of which, I swear I feel aftershocks all the time. But yet I don't feel the actual aftershocks. Go figure.

Anyways, before I get into our storm preps, I must point out that Luke hit a big milestone recently - he has officially been out of my womb longer than he was in it. He wasn't in there quite nine months (and, honestly, the first two weeks you're just gearing up for ovulation, so that shouldn't count), so it probably happened last week or so.

That's all to say that today he turns nine months old.

This kid is all smiles until the camera comes out!

I won't brag about how big he's getting (see my last post!), but he is looking more and more like a grown-up little boy.

For more about Luke, you can check out my other blog.

Now back to hurricane news... We decided to do some preparations today in case we lose power. And, if we do, there's always a chance that with widespread outages, especially along the coast, they might not restore ours for a few days. That, I suppose, is the worst case scenario.

So our whole family hit the grocery store (a first) and it was like the blind leading the blind! We walked around aimlessly, while Ryan googled what we should buy on his iphone. And you'd think he'd know exactly what to do since his station has been going overboard on hurricane coverage all week! But no.

We ended up with some peaches (the babies love them), chips and pretzels, applesauce for Luke, cereal, granola bars, diapers, water, milk and diet coke. I know, real nutritious. And I just couldn't bring myself to buy canned goods. I'll drive to my in-laws in North Carolina before I'm desperate enough to eat beans out of a can.

We hopefully will keep some things cold in a cooler, and in our fridge, until it gets too warm. I had already bought food to make meals for now through Monday - homemade spaghetti sauce, eggplant parm, pizza (see a trend? I like to get the most out of my ingredients) - and I'm still going to try to make them. I made the sauce today, will probably do the eggplant tonight, and then if we lose power I'll just warm them up on the grill. We also looked up how to do the pizza on the grill (with a pre-made crust that I have) and that should be easy.

Hopefully it'll all turn out to be nothing. I can actually hear Ryan on the TV in the other room talking to the meteorologist on his 4 p.m. show and it sounds like they're saying it might not be too bad. Let's hope.

If Irene does hit here, though, you can rest assured that one reporter will be on the story... tracking the storm... bringing you all the breaking news. He'll just be doing it from my living room because his mommy doesn't let him out in the rain!