Our friends and neighbors, the Scotts, took our family out on their boat last weekend. It was so kind of them to offer; their boat seats 4 adults and 2 kids pretty well, but no more passengers than that can fit, so we had to find a weekend that didn’t involve other visitors. We here … Read more
A gift for a GeekMom writers’ gift exchange last June.
We and our house is doing just fine with Issac. It’s no worse than tropical storm-strength here, but my neighbors and our family are all puzzled by this dull roar that we’re hearing outside.
In the meantime, we are all stuck in the house, and the kids are off of school both today and tomorrow. This is a quiet week for me, some Air War College reading, and preparing the family for this weekend’s trip to Atlanta for a Braves/Phillies game and Dragon*Con.
I had just realized today that I didn’t share a craft I had done this past June! So here we go!
While everyone’s minds are on preparing for the storm itself, something many folks don’t think about life for the week-or-so after the storm!
I’m slowly working through our checklists for getting the house prepared for the storm. I just got back from the store picking up some preemptive supplies, and I filled up a spare 5-gallon gas can that we have. I think we’re about as ready as we can be with the current forecast information.
For those new to the hurricane-life, folks may not realize how post-apocalyptic things get in an area recently ravaged by a storm. After hurricanes France and Jeanne in 2004, during which our house suffered VERY minimal damage, we were more traumatized by how things were in the week after the storms hit.
Dave, the kids and I took care of a lot of stuff last evening (after a wonderful afternoon boating with our friends the Scotts), to include burning the enormous pile of palm fronds and branches that had been sitting much of the summer in a corner of our backyard.
Today I will be attempting a trip to my local Walmart just for some groceries. I’ll toss our 10 gallon gas can into the car just in case. Although Facebook friends are saying that only premium gas is left in our community.
The kids don’t really know what to expect. The 2004 storms impacted us right around Jacob’s 2nd birthday, and I was pregnant with Timmy at the time. For Hurricane Jeanne, while I was evacuated with my Air Force unit, Dave stayed home with Jacob and Howie…and Jacob slept through the whole thing. Dave says he doesn’t wish staying home in a Category 3 storm on anyone!
Our family likes to go to the beach on weekends. It’s Dave’s and my little indulgence on Sunday mornings these days: we head out around 10am and come home in time for a late lunch around 1pm.
You never know how the Gulf is going to behave on a given trip to the beach. Sometimes there’s a ton of seaweed, sometimes there are jellyfish, sometimes the water is really deep at our favorite spot, sometimes it’s really shallow.
On our last trip, two weekends ago, the seashells were out in force and we enjoyed collecting several.
The kids have brought home buckets full of small seashells before, and they’ve mainly sat in our garage awaiting an idea. This time the kids begged me to help them do something more fruitful than have them sit in the garage.
So I offered to buy the kids a vase and they could fill the vase with the shells. I went to Walmart and took a look at the glass vases in the craft/candles section and thought to myself “That’s going to take forever”.
I found a hurricane glass and chose a sand-colored candle to add to the glass. The kids filled the hurricane glass with the shells and it now sits in the bathroom to match their surf-shop bathroom look.
First we washed the shells and sat them out in the sun to dry.
Enjoy a nice picture of the boys just before they headed out for the school bus yesterday. The boys both have great teachers this year and both have been reporting good days so far. Jacob’s happy to have many of his friends from last year’s class in his 4th grade class again this year. Timmy … Read more
On Tuesday morning at about 8:30am when I let the dog out in the backyard, I saw a thunderstorm building towards the east near Hurlburt Field and Fort Walton Beach. The rising sun was behind the storm clouds and shining through some ice clouds, causing some pretty diffractions. This gave me some good opportunity to … Read more
What??? Yeah…um…I had a good old time today photographing assorted stuff with the new camera while I was doing lawn work. First of all, this lacewing has been sitting all day on our door from the garage into the house. I’m starting to dabble a little with the post-processing that iPhoto offers. Dave has numerous … Read more
After a 3 hour car ride, the kids were ready to do some running around!
It had been on my to-do list all summer: to take the boys to Tallahassee to visit the Museum of Florida History and see the Capitol Complex. It’d also be a chance to try out my new camera in some new settings. We had put it off numerous times, and last Friday — our last Friday before school orientation — we made it out the door nice and early for the three-hour drive.
Except I forgot a critical planning factor: the one-hour time change. So we were out the door at 8am and I was thinking we’d get there in time to enjoy lunch somewhere and then get in 4-5 hours worth of sightseeing. We were on the outskirts of Tallahassee when I noticed that the clock on our truck was reading about 11:55am instead of 10:55am and I thought to myself, “Oh crap…”
So we blasted through a Taco Bell drive-through just off of Florida State’s campus and then as the kids ate I negotiated my way downtown and parked in a garage next door to the Museum.
This is a nice overhead shot of the Gray Building from the 22nd floor of the New Capitol building…the museum is only on the ground floor of this building.
