Family Dynamics and Perpetual Preparedness


photo credit: m o d e

Any minute now, I might become a father. My wife is (very) pregnant with our first child, and the seconds are ticking until our lives change significantly (for the better!). As the months have gone by, we have dedicated a great deal of time to readying, studying, and researching how best to do everything we’re soon going to need to do.

Preparedness has played a large role—indeed, a central role, since what we’ve been doing up until now is preparing for our son’s birth. Having an end result in mind forces us to think in the long term, and purchase things, learn skills, and become well versed in all that will be necessary. Too often we get wrapped up in the here and now, and let our long-term preps take a backseat.

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Prepping example on 18 Kids and Counting 4/7 on TLC

Tomorrow night, April 7th TLC will be showing a new episode of 18 Kids and Counting.

In case you aren’t familiar with the show, here is a brief description of this reality show. Michele and Jim Bob Duggar are the parents of a traditional Christian family. After 20 years of marriage, they have had 18 children with only one set of twins. They manage to afford this large family by being frugal, wisely investing the money they do have in money making properties and businesses and always paying cash for all their purchases. If they don’t have enough money to buy something, they save and buy it later or do without. All of their children are also home schooled.

What does this have to do with prepping? Continue reading “Prepping example on 18 Kids and Counting 4/7 on TLC”

Prepping for Spring

war-pointingI just finished a lunch meeting with Jayce discussing upcoming posts, some potential new authors, work (real job kinda work) and several other things.  One of the topics we discussed is that most of us (your authors) have posted few to no posts in the last month or two.  I told him I would write a quick post explaining that :)

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Shelf Reliance event at Utah Costco locations

Starting yesterday, April 2nd, the Orem Costco and the Sandy Costco are again hosting their Food Rotation System special event. They are offering the Shelf Reliance can rotating shelves for $269 which is a great price. If you have been planning on purchasing one of these systems, now is a great time to get your Food Storage organized with these great products and save some money at the same time.

Based on the Costco Special Events file, the Orem and Sandy Costcos will be hosting this event from April second to April eleventh.

The West Valley Costco location will be hosting the same event April sixteenth to twenty-fifth.

Book Review: The Zombie Survival Guide

Since we haven’t had a humor post recently (and boy do I need one), I decided to do a little review of one of my favorite books.zsg-cover The Zombie Survival Guide, by Max Brooks.  Now who among us hasn’t felt some joy in responding to the question, “What are you prepping for” with a glib reply of “For the oncoming Zombie Invasion”?  If you haven’t ever used that response, you should try it sometime, and feel the joy. Continue reading “Book Review: The Zombie Survival Guide”

Self Reliance Class April 7th in Spanish Fork

Self Reliance Class “On the Road to Preparedness”

Taught by Debbie Kent who is a preparedness/food storage specialist in her stake in California. Debbie has taught numerous classes on every aspect of preparedness and has consented to share the latest up to date methods and ideas on how we can each secure what we need for the future.

Tuesday April 7th at 7:00 p.m.

Spanish Fork South Stake House
1240 South 1158 East
Spanish Fork, UT

Here is the PDF handout for the class. [download id=”4″]

TV Worth Watching

I’m not a big TV fan myself, as I expect many of the readers of this blog.  But last year I did stumble on a show I really liked, called “The Alaska Experiment“.  The show took a couple small groups (2-4 people) of “regular people”, and dropped them in backcountry Alaska, to survive into the winter.  Now, not only was this TV, but it was reality-tv, which by nature I detest.  And yet it drew me in like no other.  Why?  Because it showed just how little people knew, and just how difficult it was to survive, even with the large amount of help these people received.  They had minimal food supplies given, they had shelter, and constant checkups to make sure they weren’t in real harm.  And yet it was still *very* difficult.  Sure, at many points I would scream at people for what I saw as dumb decisions, but I have a better camping background than they.  I was also sitting in my nice chair at home, instead of in the middle of Winter in Alaska.

Well, season 2 is coming, albeit with a slightly different name.  “Out of the Wild: The Alaska Experiment”.  Go check out the preview on the Discovery Channel page.  This season changes things a bit by dropping folks off in the wild, and letting themselves find their way out.  I’m sure we’ll all see the dangers in that.

Rahms Gun Denial List

It’s no secret that the current administration does not approve of gun ownership by American citizens. So overall it came as no surprise when I found a video on a blog of the white house chief of staff, Rahm Emmanual, speaking to a conference for the Brady campaign about one of his ways of preventing firearm ownership.

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Mike Rowe and Hard Work

I personally don’t watch all that much TV.  Even shows I actually enjoy, I still am just usually too busy to feel I can arrange the time to sit and watch something.  When I do watch though, one of my favorites is Mike Rowe.  Currently he is most well known for his Discovery Channel shows Dirty Jobs, and Deadliest Catch.  His dry humor, and matter-of-fact tone seem to keep me coming back for more.  One of the best things about his Dirty Jobs show is how it focuses on what really are the average jobs in life, the ones that most people seem to look down on for various reasons. Continue reading “Mike Rowe and Hard Work”

Gardening resources (local and mail-order)

Gardening in Utah can be a wonderfully enjoyable and productive experience. Knowing how to get started however can be a major deterrent for many people. Fortunately, there are a number of local resources we can rely upon in order to help us to get started on the path to productive, self-sufficient gardening.

After doing some research myself, here’s my garden fertilized and tilled, ready for the first planting next week:

2009_garden_ready
If you are interested in getting started, keep reading for some recommendations on local resources.
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To Bee or not to Bee?

A brief Story of the 3 B’s and the Bees

By Guest Author Bryan Esquivel

Note the Queen on the Bottom right
Note the Queen on the Bottom right

My name is Bryan. I am one of the 3 B’s. The three B’s are as follows: Bryan, Brian, and then there’s the other Bryan. I tell you that so you don’t get us confused. We are all beekeepers. If you were to tell any one of us a few years ago that we would be beekeepers, we all would have told you that you were stone cold crazy! Yet here we all are keeping honeybees…..and loving it!!! So…what happened?
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